While most countries have stopped testing nuclear weapons, many people from past test sites are still reeling from the effects of nuclear tests, with some of them experiencing and developing illnesses years later.
An Agence France-Presse report stated that over 2,400 nuclear devices were detonated during tests carried out around the world between 1945 and 2017.
According to the Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) humanitarian organization, the effects of past tests are still being felt worldwide.
What does the NPA report say?
The NPA report revealed that even though countries conducted nuclear test detonations many years ago, hundreds of thousands of people around the globe have since died from illnesses such as cancer, cardiovascular diseases and genetic effects, due to radiation exposure linked to nuclear test detonations.
The explosions have been shown to cause long-term, far-reaching harm to human health, social structures, and the environment.
According to report co-author Tilman Ruff, the risks that radiation poses to our bodies are much greater than previously thought.
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With the atmospheric tests alone expected to cause at least two million cancer deaths, with the same number of additional early deaths due to heart attacks and strokes.
However, most victims are not aware that their diseases are due to nuclear tests.
The NPA report said victims do not know what was done to them as environmental impacts remain classified.
Local communities remain clueless about the dangers of radiation due to lack of basic risk education and adequate healthcare and health screening.
Trump’s threat to resume nuclear testing
As US President Donald Trump threatened in November to resume nuclear testing, experts warned that this could be extremely dangerous.
Columbia University chemistry lecturer and head of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, who contributed to the NPA report, Ivana Hughes, said that nuclear testing has extremely “long-lasting and very serious” effects,
She added that survivors living in communities near test sites are experiencing elevated rates of illness, congenital anomalies and trauma.
“Every person alive today carries radioactive isotopes from atmospheric testing in their bones,” report co-author and University of South Carolina anthropology professor Magdalena Stawkowski told AFP.
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