Trisha T. Pritikin is a lawyer and president of the Board of Directors of Consequences of Radiation Exposure (CORE) Museum and Archives, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase public awareness of the human toll of exposure to ionizing radiation. She lives in Berkeley, California. Foulds, Tom H.
Pritikin's compelling series of testimonies from the Hanford
plaintiffs greatly enhances our understanding of the lived
experience and human cost of nuclear weapons development and
testing.--Pacific Historical ReviewThis book intersects with
disability studies and with the history of medicine's patient
narratives to join the relentless literature about the
contamination found at every step of nuclear technology.--IsisA
must read for anyone interested in understanding the impacts of
nuclear production and the ways our nuclear history has been
shielded from public consciousness.--H-Net ReviewsThe Hanford
Plaintiffs will be a resource for scholars seeking to better
understand the atomic West, and particularly how Hanford's: slow
motion disaster played out in people's bodies.--Western Historical
QuarterlyThis is a history that demands reading. Highly
recommended.--ChoiceThrough the unrelenting efforts of Pritikin and
her colleagues, twenty-four of the Hanford Plaintiffs at last tell
their stories, told in their own words, that serve as a stark
warning to our world: this can happen to you.--Nuclear Age Peace
FoundationOffers readers a timely and valuable contribution to the
project as well as a much-needed reminder of the staggering costs
of nuclear secrecy.--Undark MagazinePritikin does a great service
in illuminating the history and the stories of both Hanford and the
Nevada Test Site. . . . These raw, unfiltered stories ground the
book in humanity and compel the reader through the hard facts,
making for a more whole understanding of this
history.--Inkstick
The discussion of health effects from exposure to radioactive
contaminants tends to focus on acute effects--cancers and death
tolls. Pritikin shows in heart-breaking detail the stockpile of
health problems from exposure to radioactivity and how painfully
these chronic health problems dismantle lives. A passionate and
carefully researched account of the failed fight for atomic
justice.--Kate Brown, author of Plutopia: Nuclear
Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American
Plutonium Disasters and Manual for Survival: An
Environmental History of the Chernobyl DisasterGiven the current
political climate--North Korea's nuclear threat, the current US
administration's provocation of North Korea, the potential
unraveling of Iran's nuclear deal, and the ongoing tension between
India and Pakistan--Trisha Pritikin's The Hanford Plaintiffs is a
timely addition to literature that has addressed the health harm
caused by radiation exposure downwind of weapons' production and
testing sites as well as from the use of nuclear weapons in
warfare; from uranium mining, milling, or transport; from nuclear
power plant accidents; and from leaking nuclear waste. Pritikin's
work stands out, not only in its description of the plight of the
people--called downwinders--in and around the Hanford site but also
in its disclosure of the callous disregard of the US government for
the innocent citizens it was supposed to protect.--Yuki
Miyamoto, PhD, associate professor of religious studies, DePaul
University, and author of Beyond the Mushroom CloudThe Hanford
Plaintiffs is an urgent book for our times. We think we know about
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on the one hand, and Three Mile Island,
Chernobyl, and Fukushima on the other. We might imagine that these
places stand for events safely consigned to the past or that the
production of nuclear weapons and nuclear power are separate
affairs. Now we are encountering, once again, cavalier talk about
the use of nuclear weapons. The Hanford Plaintiffs opens our eyes
to the reality of how the atomic age has played long-term,
continuing havoc with whole communities, the environment, and
democratic principles in the United States and throughout the world
by presenting the life stories of the downwinders of the Hanford
Nuclear Reservation, where the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb was
produced. Pritikin lays out her material methodically, providing
the scientific, medical, legal, and historical components important
to readers' full understanding.-- Norma Field, PhD,
professor emerita, University of Chicago, East Asian Languages and
Civilizations, and author of In the Realm of a Dying Emperor: Japan
at Century's EndThe Hanford Plaintiffs is an extraordinary and
unique expose of the human results of deliberate releases of huge
quantities of radioactive isotopes from the Hanford reactors and
nuclear complex over many years of operation.--Helen
Caldicott, MD
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