Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, will hold a field hearing in Kingman, Arizona on April 14, 2014. The hearing will focus on expanding eligibility for benefits under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to all residents of Mohave County affected by downwind radioactive contamination, also known as “downwinders.”
In 1990, Congress passed the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) to compensate people (or their surviving beneficiaries) who were diagnosed with specified cancers and chronic diseases that are assumed to have resulted from exposure to radiation from U.S. nuclear weapons tests between 1952 and 1962. The “downwinder” category currently includes all of Coconino, Yavapai, Gila, Navajo and Apache counties, but only parts of Mohave County.
In January 2013, Rep. Gosar introduced H.R.424, the Mohave County Radiation Compensation Act of 2013, which would make all affected residents of Mohave County eligible for radiation exposure compensation. Currently, only the parts of Mohave County north of the Grand Canyon and west of the Colorado River, commonly referred to as “the Arizona Strip,” are eligible for compensation under the law.
Mohave County is closer in proximity to the Nevada Test Site than the other Arizona counties eligible for radiation exposure compensation. A survey conducted to compare radiation-induced cancer incidences in the RECA-covered counties also showed that Mohave County had the second-highest overall incidence rate. The National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences both concluded in separate studies that all of Mohave County should be covered by RECA.