Drs. Doug Brugge and Rob Goble report that from World War II until 1971, the government was the sole purchaser of uranium ore in the United States. Underground uranium mining occurred mostly in the southwestern U.S.and drew many Native Americans and others into work in the mines and mills. Despite a long and well-developed understanding, based on the European experience earlier in the century, that underground uranium mining led to high rates of lung cancer (especially if smoking tobacco), few protections were provided for U.S. miners before 1962 and their adoption after that time was slow and incomplete. The resulting high rates of illness among miners led in 1990 to passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.
This history details how the federal government deliberately avoided dealing with a health disaster among Navajo uranium miners, even though uranium mining was considered very much a federal matter. For up to 2 decades after the harmful effects of uranium mining were known, protective safeguards were not implemented. The position of scientists in the government who were knowledgeable and who often argued for protection was seriously compromised. We are hardly the first to conclude that these delays represent a gross violation of the rights of the miners. Federal regulations for ventilation came nearly 20 years after the need was clear, and only when many miners were obviously sick and dying. The revisions proposed by NIOSH have still not been implemented.
Earlier efforts at educating mine owners and state officials and notification of miners were half-hearted at best. Compensation for those who were sick or died came only another 20 years later, after hundreds had died. Even when compensation was belatedly provided, it was given in a grudging and capricious fashion. The Navajo People suffered along with White miners from these failures. In addition, they were even more poorly informed and hampered from protecting themselves.
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