Utah News Dispatch
Utah health clinic to resume screening and helping downwinders apply for compensation
A fireball rises into the sky over Nevada after the U.S. government detonated a 61-kiloton device on June 4, 1953. Nuclear weapons experiments at the Nevada Test Site spread fallout to other states, including Utah, research and records show. (Getty Images)
Last month, Congress revived and expanded the program that offered payments to people sickened by nuclear weapons testing, meaning Utah’s downwinders can again apply for compensation.
For years, Intermountain’s Downwinder Clinic, located at the St. George Regional Hospital’s Cancer Center, has provided free help to downwinders — that includes education, health care assistance and help applying to receive payments through the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA.
However, RECA expired in June 2024 after Congress failed to reauthorize it.
In the 13 months after the program expired, the Downwinder Clinic was still working with eligible families to gather the documents needed to qualify for RECA payments. And last month, after Congress reauthorized RECA in its massive spending bill, downwinders who were just recently diagnosed with cancer or who didn’t know about the program are again eligible for compensation.
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“We have been working with families during the 13 months the program was expired to help gather the documents they would need when RECA was reinstated. Now, we want people to know that the qualifying boundaries have expanded, as well as new applicants qualify for a larger compensation amount for the health issues they have encountered,” said Barlow.
RECA has been in place since 1990, but downwinders have long said it should be expanded. Despite studies suggesting the entire West was impacted by dangerous levels of radiation during nuclear tests, downwinders in just 10 counties in Utah, as well as a handful of counties in Nevada and Arizona, were covered.
Now, the program’s scope is much broader. All of Utah is considered an affected area, meaning if you lived in the Beehive State for a period of 12 months between 1951 to 1962, and contracted a certain type of cancer, you are likely eligible for compensation.
Eligible cancers include leukemia (but not chronic lymphocytic leukemia), multiple myeloma, lymphomas and cancers of the pharynx, small intestine, salivary gland, brain, stomach, urinary bladder, colon, thyroid, pancreas, breast, esophagus, bile ducts, liver, gall bladder, lung, and ovarian.
New applicants will also now receive $100,000 — the prior compensation amount was $50,000. However, that increase is not retroactive, meaning downwinders who already received payments are not eligible for the new amount.
