Intermountain’s Downwinders Clinic opens after government restores and expands federal law

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) expired over a year ago, but it has recently been restored and expanded, and the Intermountain Health Downwinders Clinic is now available for those impacted by nuclear testing.

RECA provides compensation

for health issues like cancer that people have experienced due to radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing in Nevada between the 1950s to the 1960s.

The Downwinders Clinic is located in the St. George Regional Cancer Center, and it can help with education, healthcare assistance, and applying for RECA funding for affected families.

RECA was reinstated and expanded, and the expansion means that now all of Utah is included as an affected area, in addition to Idaho and New Mexico. The amount of money new applicants can get has also increased from $50,000 to $100,000.

The services the Downwinders Clinic provides are free.

Rebecca Barlow, the project director for the Radiation Exposure Clinic at Intermountain St. George Regional Hospital, said that they have been working with families in the 13 months that RECA was expired to prepare them to apply for RECA once it was reinstated.

The cancers that qualify someone for RECA are the same as before it expired, and they include leukemia, multiple myeloma, lymphomas, and primary cancers of the pharynx, small intestine, salivary gland, brain, stomach, urinary bladder, colon, thyroid, pancreas, breast, esophagus, bile ducts, liver, gall bladder, lung, and ovaries.

928 nuclear tests were performed at the Nevada Testing Site, but only 100 of those tests were atmospheric tests, meaning that the atomic weapons exploded at or above ground level. These are the tests that caused health problems for Downwinders, according to RECA.