Radioactivity, Cancer, and the Plight of Downwinders in New Mexico

The first atomic bomb.
On July 16, 1945 the first atomic bomb was exploded in New Mexico, in the desert about 100 miles south of Albuquerque. It’s now called Trinity Site and is a prohibited area except for twice a year when it’s opened to the public. I took this tour about 10 years ago. I was interested in looking for green pellets of melted glass, which was sand melted by immense heat of the bomb explosion. But a big sign said do not pick up anything from the ground, as it can be radioactive. I doubt that, as the cleanup crew would have carted away surface dirt and rocks that would have been radioactive.

I knew the story well, as I worked in Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1972 when I came from Australia. The bomb was made there over several years in a top-secret program called the Manhattan Project. A film called Oppenheimer is a very good movie about the story of the bomb.

An iconic restaurant, known for its green chile cheeseburgers, is called the Owl Café and is situated on Interstate 25, not far from the Trinity site. The story is that workers who built the Trinity bomb site would gamble at cards in a back room of the restaurant until late in the night.

Last Wednesday, July 16, 2025, was the 80th anniversary of the atomic bomb. An elderly man, about 90 years old, told me at a party that he had heard the bomb exploding.

He was baiting a worm on a hook while fishing in Elephant Butte Lake, maybe 50 miles south of Trinity Site. He said he heard the boom of the bomb, but wasn’t able to see anything, and of course the military had kept the bomb test under wraps so nobody knew what the explosion was.

Downwinders.
An atomic bomb releases radiation when its exploded above ground. A radioactive cloud of dust and ash drifted to the northeast of Trinity Site on July 16, 1945. The fallout landed on an area about 250 x 200 miles. This is the source of the term “downwinders”. Radiation can cause cancers and other health issues, which can be delayed by years and years. Many such health issues have been reported in New Mexico.

Surface testing of bombs was also carried out in Nevada in the 1950s. In 1990 the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was passed into law by the US government to compensate victims of radiation clouds. Unfortunately, the downwinders of New Mexico were excluded, apparently because of lack of sufficient proof that their cancers were caused by bomb radiation.

But some New Mexico victims were included in RECA—uranium miners in the western part of the state, such as at Church Rock Mine near Gallup. Uranium mining became a big deal in the cold war of the 1950s and 1960s, because uranium is used in building more bombs. The US government were guaranteed purchasers of the mined uranium. Over 1,000 uranium mines came into existence, many that employed miners from the Navajo Nation. Under RECA, the government has paid claims of 41,000 people, and paid $2.6 billion in reparations, the majority to recipients from the Nevada nuclear testing site.

Proof radiation causes cancers.
From the Albuquerque Journal: “A series of scientific papers from the National Cancer Institute published in 2020 concluded that some people living in New Mexico during the Trinity Test probably got cancer from radioactive fallout, The Associated Press reported…Researchers suggested exposure levels would have been substantially higher than natural background radiation in five counties: Guadalupe, Lincoln, San Miguel, Socorro and Torrance.”

The papers made estimates, marred by lack of original data on radiation measured in different locations after the bomb. Plus uncertainties in how people encountered the contaminating radiation: were they inhaling dust or drinking water or eating food from the garden. And some body organs are more prone to cancer, thyroid being the worst.

But the scientific papers carried the day, and the federal government added New Mexico downwinders to RECA in early July of 2025.

Personal interviews.
Here is one of several interviews, reported by the Albuquerque Journal:

On July 16, 1945, 9-year-old Mela Armijo got up early to have coffee with her dad. Sugar was rationed because of the war, but her dad let Armijo sprinkle some in her coffee. The Trinity site, the location of the infamous detonation, was 14 miles from their ranch house, Armijo said.

“We just heard a loud, loud explosion, but when we turned around, all we saw was smoke, or dust, or whatever it was,” Armijo said. “But our cows all turned white on top. The government never let us know what they had done.”

The family got drinking water from a cistern, which Armijo believes was contaminated by fallout.

At 89, much of her family has died of cancer. Eight years after the bomb test, her father, Frank Gallegos, died of stomach cancer. Her mom and siblings later died of pancreatic cancer.

Stomach cancer is associated with high-dose exposure to radiation and pancreatic cancer has a possible association with radiation exposure, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Both diseases are eligible for compensation under a Department of Justice program created by the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act for people who lived downwind of nuclear tests.

Armijo believes the deaths are connected to the Trinity Test.
“We knew it had to be that, but we couldn’t do anything about it. They wouldn’t listen to us,” Armijo said. “We were a very poor family.”

Other stories in the Journal magnify the sadness over and over. I’m glad that RECA has come through for the downwinders of New Mexico.

An insightful history of the first atomic bomb in New Mexico is provided by the National Park Service.

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The Gray Nomad. Its mid-summer and monsoon season in New Mexico, so-called because most of the rains come in July and August in the form of thunderstorms. In a time of serious drought, when the Rio Grande is very low, we had a beautiful heavy rain this week that lasted almost an hour.
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How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods
and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?
Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. [1 John, chapter 3.]