A Whiff of Patriotism and a Cloud of Dust

Nevada’s Old Bomb Hands Offered a Lifeline

Many people have spent their youth dodging debts, their middle age dodging matrimony, and later years dodging responsibility. But the stout-hearted souls who toiled in dusty Nye County did none of the above.

No sir—they walked headlong into danger, wrapped in government-issue coveralls and carrying the kind of lunch pails that clanged like liberty bells in the Nevada breeze. They worked at what was then called the Nevada Test Site—now rechristened the Nevada National Security Site–for no reason other than to lend some refinement to a place built for turning the desert into a stovetop.

From Pahrump to Beatty to Amargosa, these were plain folks—dirt on their boots, grit in their smiles—who spent their days poking and prodding the atom as if it owed them money. And the atom, being a spiteful little rascal, took its revenge.

The good men and women who clocked in under mushroom clouds and clocked out with radioactive dust in their boots now find themselves years later eligible for something called the Workers Health Protection Program, or WHPP—pronounced like a surprised hiccup. Don’t let the bureaucratic name fool you.

The WHPP’s Early Lung Cancer Detection Program, which has been scanning chests and saving lives since 2000, is a godsend cloaked in government jargon. Using low-dose CT scans—a marvelous contraption that lets doctors peek inside you without the indignity of being carved like a Christmas goose—the program has found over 230 cases of lung cancer.

And get this–most were caught early before the cancer could pack up and go sightseeing through the lymph nodes. And lest you think it’s all lungs and no love, WHPP also checks for bladder and bowel troubles, liver and kidney woes, hearing loss, and just about anything else you might pick up from shaking hands with plutonium for thirty years.

They say lung cancer is the deadliest of the bunch—it kills more folks than breast and colon cancer put together, and that’s no mean feat. But if you catch it early, before it’s taken root like a stubborn mesquite bush, your odds improve faster than a card shark’s grin when the dealer’s green.

The program’s no fly-by-night outfit either. It started at just three DOE plants, and now it covers 15 sites across eight states—each one a little monument to humankind’s hubris and our infinite capacity to clean up after it.

A woman who once drew a paycheck from the Test Site and now helps run the program, Sandie Medina, said it best–this service saves lives and gives peace of mind. And that, dear reader, is no small thing—especially for folks who once measured their risk in Roentgens and trusted Uncle Sam wouldn’t forget them when the clouds cleared.

So if you, or someone you know, once labored under the great, white blossoms of atomic ambition in Nye County, you might do well to give this program a look. It may just give you another year, another breath, another shot at watching your grandkid’s baseball game without wheezing like a busted accordion.

To learn more, visit Worker-Health.org or schedule an appointment call 888-241-1199 or 702-485-6724.