Just reading up on the cold war and find this....

"Fallout from the testing was not - as most people mistakenly believe - confined to Southern Utah. Its silent, unseen poison has touched the lives of thousands of people nationwide, spreading as far as the East Coast and Canada. A 1997 report released by the National Cancer Institute found that much of the nation was blanketed with fallout from the atmospheric tests performed at the Nevada Test Site from 1951 to 1962. Records of the Public Health Service and Atomic Energy Commission show that fallout from Nevada poisoned milk in New England, wheat in South Dakota, soil in Virginia and fish in the Great Lakes. In addition, contaminated milk was shipped to Nevada. Hay was shipped to California. Sheep were sheared and their wool sold out of state. One air force colonel theorized that there isn't anyone in the U.S. who isn't a downwinder.

John Gofman, who worked for the Atomic Energy Commission and has written definitive books on the effects of radiation, says the government underestimated by 20 times the rates of cancer radiation caused during the years of atomic testing. The accumulated fallout exposure from the Nevada Test Site was three times as much as that from Chernobyl, according to 1998 congressional testimony from Owen Hoffman, former chief scientist for the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Testing moved underground in 1963, with nuclear tests conducted twice a month at the Nevada Test Site until testing was banned in 1993. During those 30 years of underground testing, however, 15 percent of the 760 announced tests leaked radiation into downwind areas.

For four decades, the U.S. government covered up the human and environmental devastation of fallout from atomic testing. During the years of testing, the government continually reassured citizens that atomic testing was safe and even encouraged families to "participate in a moment of history" by watching the blasts. Some Utahns still have copies of the pamphlets issued by the government featuring pictures of tranquil cowboys and bylines assuring: "Fallout does not constitute a serious hazard to any living thing outside the test site." Officials claimed that radiation in bombs was no more harmful than sunshine....

...In terms of dollars, the nuclear arms race cost America $5.5 trillion, according to figures in "Atomic Audit." But in terms of human health and suffering, nuclear testing was catastrophic. Given the half-life of deadly fission byproducts like iodine-131, plutonium-283, strontium-90 and radioactive cesium-137, we have yet to see the end of the suffering caused by atomic testing.

I wrote my story hoping to help people understand how the nuclear age continues to shape our lives. I am not an expert, but I am a downwinder.

http://waynesimister.mysite.com/utahpast.htm

Map showing exposure levels... http://rex.nci.nih.gov/massmedia/fig1.html