By Bangor Daily News
One of Jeffery Dean’s close Army buddies died a few days ago of a cancer that the Belfast man has no problem connecting to their stint cleaning up nuclear waste on a tiny South Pacific atoll.
The problem is, that’s not how they see it over at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — and that makes Dean see red. The VA recently responded to a BDN query asking why the men stationed on hot, dusty Enewetak Atoll in the Marshall Islands in the late 1970s are not designated as “Atomic Veterans.”
Dean and his buddy were among a few thousand of American troops tasked with rehabilitating the atoll, the site of more than 40 nuclear tests, before it was returned to the people of the Marshall Islands.
“The data accumulated over the three years of the project do not indicate any area or instance of concern over
radiological safety. All doses, internal and external were minimal,” VA spokesperson Ndidi Mojay wrote in an email to the BDN.
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