Nuclear fallout gave her cancer. Now she’s a dogged voice for America’s downwinders

When she was 29, Mary Dickson got thyroid cancer and chalked it up to bad luck or bad genes.

Her life had been pretty idyllic, despite being raised against the frightening backdrop of the Cold War.

She spent hours of her childhood running around in the gullies by her home near the mouth of Parleys Canyon in Salt Lake City. The neighborhood was packed with kids who pretended those rising and falling hills were rollercoasters, racing up and down, laughing and screaming. With seven kids in her house, she always had playmates.

Dickson and her friends also pretended at school. Children were taught to huddle under their wooden desks and cover their heads with their hands, pretending Russians were dropping bombs. Each child brought a bleach bottle filled with water, name scrawled in indelible marker so they’d have something to drink should bombs actually fall. Sometimes, they cowered in a “fallout shelter” — a crawlspace under the grade school— waiting for an audible all-clear.

But as most children get to do, Dickson grew up. She went to college, launched a career in journalism, married. Then came the cancer, with its then-brutal treatment: removal of her thyroid and surrounding lymph nodes, followed by radioactive iodine-infused medicinal drinks that made her ovaries light up during monitoring. Hospital staff put a “Caution, radioactive material!” sign on her hospital room door. Even those delivering meals would reach in just far enough to put food on a nearby tray.

A radiologist stood in the doorway each day and pointed a Geiger counter her way. She couldn’t go home until it stopped beeping.

Dickson was the radioactive material the sign warned others about.

When she finally left the hospital, her clothes were burned and she was warned not to be around pregnant women or small children for a while. “Don’t get pregnant for a year,” she was told. That was enough to make those closest to her nervous just to be nearby.

She later learned her cancer was related to the backdrop of her childhood romps. The U.S. government admitted that all of Utah, Idaho and New Mexico, as well as parts of Arizona and Nevada were downwind of nuclear tests above and below ground on the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Some blasts were reportedly stronger than nuclear bombs dropped in World War II.

Americans in the path of radioactive fallout — downwinders — experienced what in other circumstances could be called friendly fire.

Dickson cannot pretend that what she gave up, like the chance to have children or the deaths of so many she loved, including relatives, can be chalked up to bad luck or bad genes.

So she’s been doing something about it.

Rethinking what happened

Dickson is a petite blonde whose siren-red lipstick is something of a signature. She’s a familiar name in Utah, where for more than 35 years she has been a prominent journalist who also amassed podcast and playwright credits.

Now retired, she spends most of her time helping downwinders recognize their status and file claims under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, that formal government acknowledgement that Cold War fallout hit devastatingly close to home. She’s among a group of outspoken advocates for those affected and has been instrumental in getting an expanded version of RECA, as it’s called, passed by Congress. But she told Deseret News there’s more to be done. More people were impacted than have been acknowledged.

When she’s not doing RECA-related work, Dickson is often found wandering in the hills with her 3-½-year-old Husky, Khione, whose name means “goddess of snow” in ancient Greek. The dog is as restless and energetic as Dickson and they journey miles along trails in the Salt Lake City foothills.

Khione and Dickson are both friendly, so the two often befriend others. And in a nod to how far the radioactive fallout spread, it turns out many are also downwinders or survivors of those who were.

It was such a chance encounter that launched Dickson into what’s an almost-evangelical passion for finding and helping those affected by nuclear weapons tests.

For a freelance magazine article in the early 1990s, she interviewed a New York writer and photographer, Carole Gallagher, who was in Utah to capture stories of people who’d been in the path of fallout for what would later be the book, “American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War.”

Gallagher was listing cancers linked to fallout and when she said thyroid cancer, Dickson mentioned she’d had that. Gallagher asked where she grew up, then if she drank milk as a child. Milk from cows that ate radiated grass was believed to be one exposure source.

“You got cancer from testing,” Gallagher told her.

“No, I didn’t,” Dickson replied. “I never lived in southern Utah.”

That was when Dickson first saw the U.S. map showing where three or more nuclear debris clouds passed overhead. It was created by Richard Miller, an industrial safety expert and author of multiple books on U.S. nuclear testing. He based it on once-classified maps from the U.S. Weather Service and the Atomic Energy Commission. Later, a National Cancer Institute study found every county in the continental U.S. got some level of fallout.

When Gallagher’s book was published, Dickson said she was almost afraid to open it, to see her picture and for the first time be labeled a downwinder. The label would stick.

Dickson, by profession a dogged researcher, started digging.

At some point, she and her older sister, Ann, started listing everyone near their childhood home who had cancer or autoimmune dysfunction: the girl her age with thyroid cancer, kids with bone cancer, leukemia, brain tumors. “There were so many. Growing up, when it happens, you just think ‘I guess everyone gets cancer.’”

Their people-we-know list grew to 54 names in a five-block area. In 2001, Dickson added her sister’s name: Ann DeBirk. She died at age 46, leaving three young kids. Today, one of Dickson’s younger sisters battles a rare cancer and another has autoimmune disorders.

While RECA acknowledges some responsibility for fallout causing cancer, various scientists told Dickson there’s compelling evidence some autoimmune disorders are rooted in nuclear testing of old, too.

The sheer number of people she’s met who had cancer or possibly fallout-linked immune disorders stuns her.

“One of the effects of my cancer is the sorrow I carry — not just for myself but for everyone I’ve lost or for those whose stories I’ve listened to,” Dickson said. “I feel an enormous responsibility to all of those we’ve lost and those too sick to speak out to keep their stories alive and to help make sure they are compensated.”

Finding her voice

Her first speaking invitation came unexpectedly from the Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City. So Dickson shared her story and information she’d gathered about the testing. Soon, invitations poured in. She testified before Congress and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She spoke at a hearing in St. George at then-Dixie College. By then, she was both mourning and mad and cut out yellow construction-paper headstones with names and dates for people she knew whose deaths she believed could be blamed on nuclear weapons testing. One of her mentors, downwinder J. Preston Truman, who later died of cancer, had been compiling files and helped her tape the headstones to the big windows so the safety commissioners arriving for the hearing would see them.

That day, in the restroom, Dickson said one of the panelists told her, “I’m so sorry for what happened to you. I had no idea this happened.”

That admission was stunning, Dickson said. She decided to keep telling her story and gathering others. She’s now done that many times at the United Nations, before the National Academy of Sciences and more. At one point, she and others carried pocket-sized copies of Miller’s debris-cloud map and other data, passing them out to each congressional office.

Dickson was then still working full time for Utah Public Television, while also working nearly full time as a downwinder activist.

Gathering the research

Perhaps her journalism training — asking questions, reaching out to sources — made it easier for her to find the right people for her tough questions.

Dickson cold-called Joseph J. Mangano, an epidemiologist and executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project, who had been given a collection of roughly 300,000 baby teeth from areas where fallout landed. The study dates back to the 1950s, led by a St. Louis doctor named Louise Reiss, who thought strontium — an element the body can absorb, known to carry serious health effects in its radioactive form — had to be making its way into kids’ teeth because they drank milk from cows eating radiated grass. Researchers hoped to quantify strontium in the teeth and pair the amount with what happened to the owners of the teeth, but the follow-up linkage to health outcomes was never completed.

Those tiny teeth are still in little manila envelopes, their color darkened with time, each bearing the name of the child, the parents, where they were from, and the child’s age, Dickson said.

Dickson’s efforts encouraged her friends to question, too. One whose mother died recently sent bone tissue to a researcher at Purdue University who said he’d never seen such high levels of cesium in a bone fragment. The radioactive form of cesium known as Cs-137 was released into the environment as a byproduct of nuclear weapons testing. Her mother would have been 12 or so growing up in southern Utah during the testing.

Scientific evidence matters. But many research grants have shriveled or died entirely. When pondering the magnitude of loss, Dickson wonders how much of the evidence was buried in the literal sense, taken to the grave.

Banding together

Pockets of concerned people were finding each other. Dickson was working with a group of downwinders in the West and from various Native American reservations, who met weekly on Zoom. She connected separately with the Union of Concerned Scientists, who sponsored biweekly meetings. She said it’s hard for ordinary citizens to know who to talk to in Congress and how to set meetings up, but once the union took it on, “everything started opening up.” Visiting Congressional offices “helped a lot.”

Their staunchest ally in Congress was Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who kept hearing from mothers living near where Manhattan Project waste was dumped. Their children were getting cancer.

Hawley started one loud, strident press conference with Dickson’s story and soon she was doing interviews on C-SPAN, writing a piece for USA Today, co-writing for Politico with the head of the Arms Control Association. She’d decided she would talk to anybody any time about fallout’s devastation.

Original RECA

The first version of RECA passed October 15, 1990, but it was much more limited in scope than the damage wrought on downwinders, many of whom would not be recognized for another 34 years.

The original RECA divided Utah in half. Those on the south side of a county line got a flat $50,000 compensation if they had certain cancers (the list has since expanded) while others with the same cancers “were out of luck” if they lived even an inch past the imaginary line where fallout reportedly stopped, “even though we know that northern Utah often got as much and sometimes more than southern Utah,” Dickson said.

She and others kept fighting for compensation to reach more people devastated by nuclear fallout. Dickson even wrote a play, “Exposed,” about her childhood, her family’s losses and the death of her sister. It’s been produced again and again.

Counting the cost

In 2021, Lilly Adams, campaign manager for the Union of Concerned Scientists, tried to explain the toll of all that testing. A decade before, the Senate had designated Jan. 27 as National Day of Remembrance for Downwinders. In a blog she wrote that between 1945 and 1992, the U.S. conducted over 1,000 nuclear weapons tests, 216 above ground or under water. They spread radioactive fallout across the country. Before testing started, she wrote, the government acknowledged people downwind would be exposed to more radiation “than was considered medically safe.” Decades later, a federal court ruled the government was negligent in monitoring and protecting those downwind.

Adams cited a 1997 study from the National Cancer Institute estimating testing likely caused between 11,000 and 212,000 thyroid cancer cases, just from Iodine-131. And a study in 2020 found that the 1945 New Mexico Trinity Test, the first nuclear weapons test, “likely caused up to 1,000 cancer cases. A recent study also shows a sharp spike in infant mortality linked to the test.” A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study had in 1980 shown veterans who were part of atmospheric testing had “drastically higher” rates of leukemia than others in the military.

In 2024, Congress was considering a bill to add uranium miners to RECA compensation. Dickson wrote in Deseret News that Utah’s congressional delegation “has been absent in our fight,” although 21 of Utah’s counties were in the highest 50 of the 3,100 counties across the U.S. where radioactive Iodine-131 had made its way into the soil from Nevada bomb tests.” The top 50 counties for I-131 in Miller’s “The U.S. Atlas of Nuclear Fallout” included Utah, Morgan, Davis, Salt Lake, Weber, Summit and Wasatch, Utah’s most populous. None were included in RECA.

Gathering personal stories

As Dickson researched, she found others working on expanding downwinder compensation.

Laura Taylor Turner is an attorney in Prescott, Arizona, though in college she wanted to be a concert pianist. She took the law school entrance exam on a dare and when that went well, she pivoted.

But her first couple years practicing law were not soul fulfilling — until a guy walked into her office needing help filling out a RECA claim form. By the time she finished helping him, she was hooked on helping downwinders. Now part of her time is spent teaching groups of people for free what kind of paperwork is needed to prove a claim and how to get it. Her paying practice often involves more difficult claims. Along the way, she got involved with Mohave County Downwinders. Mohave was left out of the original RECA, despite being closest in Arizona to nuclear testing. She met Adams and others investigating fallout.

The late Arizona Sen. John McCain predicted Mohave would not be included nor RECA expanded, unless other states and senators got involved. Las Vegas wasn’t included either, though it was close to testing. There were lots of “forgotten guinea pigs,” Turner said.

Working with Dickson would come later, after RECA was expanded. The two are among advocates who agree it still falls short of being fair.

RECA 2.0

RECA was reauthorized and expanded in 2025, with a two-year period to file a claim, ending Dec. 31, 2027. It passed coincidentally on Dickson’s birthday. Compensation was doubled to a flat tax-exempt $100,000. Coverage was expanded to include all of Utah, Idaho and New Mexico and parts of Arizona and Nevada. It also covers areas in Missouri, where Manhattan Project waste was dumped. But during last-minute wrangling that advocates for expansion can’t explain, Montana, Colorado and parts of Arizona and Nevada disappeared from the bill. Guam, a hard-hit U.S. protectorate, was not included, either.

Covered cancers include leukemia after age 20, multiple myeloma, lymphomas except Hodgkin’s disease, and primary cancers of thyroid, breast, esophagus, stomach, pharynx, small intestine, pancreas, bile ducts, gall bladder, salivary gland, urinary bladder, brain, colon, ovary, liver, renal system or lung. It excludes liver cancer if there’s cirrhosis or hepatitis B.

“I was able to get chronic lymphocytic leukemia covered by just yelling loudly for the last six months at the DOJ,” Turner said. “The website says they’re not covering it, but they are.”

Covered noncancers include some specific nonmalignant respiratory disease and chronic kidney diseases that primarily impact uranium industry workers. They must have worked at uranium mines or mills in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, South Dakota, Washington, Utah, Idaho, North Dakota, Oregon and Texas for at least one year and have a covered respiratory or kidney diagnosis.

Claims can be complicated or simple. A claimant must prove a covered illness and physical presence in the affected areas for one year in New Mexico between Sept. 24, 1944 and Nov. 6, 1962; in any other affected area one year between Jan. 21, 1951 and Nov. 6, 1962 or in any affected area for the entire month of July 1962.

A downwinder can apply directly. If that person died, a spouse is first in line if they were married at least a year. Divorce stops eligibility. Next are living children, who share equally. If there are none, grandchildren can split a claim. There’s no provision for heirs of a downwinder’s child who died if there are any living children. Turner recently helped 24 grandchildren in one family, who will split $100,000. “They almost need an attorney to coordinate them,” she said.

If the person who died has no children, a parent or grandparent can claim compensation, but there really aren’t any of those around anymore, Turner said.

Proving one was downwind that long ago can be tricky, but Polk’s directories, school records, church records and other items can do it. In most cases, original paperwork is needed, though Dickson and Turner recently told a library staff — libraries are frequently asked for help — that a letter from the librarian attesting the copies of the Polk’s directory’s covers and relevant pages are real can work.

Medical records might seem easier, but they’re not. If a person died in the 1970s, ‘80s or ‘90s, it’s possible records no longer exist. A death certificate only works if it listed a qualified diagnosis. States have cancer registries, but rules vary. And some states might only release them to the person they’re about.

Dickson warns people to start their claims ASAP, because gathering material takes time and the deadline is the end of 2027. Processing takes up to eight months once a claim number has been assigned and another month or so to pay if the claim passes muster. Everything’s slower than you’d expect. For full details, visit the U.S. Department of Justice RECA Guidelines.

Those who were left out

Lots of people were left out, said Dickson, who’s among those pushing to change that. They were included and then disappeared in the final bill, stunning those who’d worked hard on coverage. Besides disappearing locations, some illnesses like lymphedema believed related to fallout were dropped.

A proposal to close some of those gaps is reportedly imminent. On July 16, the anniversary of both the 1945 Trinity Test and the 1979 Church Rock uranium mill spill, which also happens to be National Atomic Veterans Day, bipartisan legislation will be introduced to address some of the RECA gaps.

The bill would broaden eligibility to cover all of Arizona, Colorado, Guam, Montana and Nevada. It would also add coverage for those exposed to radiation from specific Manhattan Project sites in Missouri, Washington, Ohio and Colorado.

Young children were the most vulnerable and those in the womb might have had highest risk, per Turner, but they are not included in RECA, their personhood not recognized even by an administration that argues life begins at conception.

Karen Day is an example. She was born a month after some of the heaviest nuclear tests. At age 40, she was diagnosed with stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is covered by RECA. She later got breast cancer. But she doesn’t qualify now because she was in the womb during the testing. If Turner has her way, Day will be a test case.

Day learned about RECA from Dickson, who she met at a dog park years ago. They chatted often while their dogs played together.

The cancer cost her a lot, including hearing loss from treatment and what she calls “chemo brain” that affects her short-term memory. Her oncologist said she may never get back to where it was pre-cancer.

The list of cancers is incomplete, too, Dickson and other advocates said. For instance, RECA covers ovarian cancer, but not uterine cancer. Testicular cancer isn’t covered for men, which befuddles Dickson.

“There was a 4-year-old in my neighborhood when I was little who died of testicular cancer four weeks after his 10-year-old sister died of brain cancer. I stayed in touch with their mother for a long time and brought her to testify at hearings,” Dickson said. “She’s gone now. But to lose two little kids in a month ... ”

Using her voice

Karyn Crandall worked with Dickson at PBS Utah before Dickson retired. Cancer has affected more than a dozen close family members, Crandall said, some of whom have applied for RECA. While she personally won’t see any money, “In my eyes, Mary Dickson is a saint.” She admires Dickson’s intellect and how she carries and expresses herself.

While Dickson was a great coworker and boss, she said, her battle for justice for downwinders is a greater legacy.

“That her hard work has brought justice to so many families is quite an accomplishment,” she said. “I am super proud of her and grateful to know her. She’s made a huge impact on lots of people’s families, including mine.”

Crandall describes Dickson as someone who’s usually smiling, even bubbly. “She doesn’t let people know her personal problems. She’s always so worried about and cares so much about everybody else. Just the fact that she took the time to listen to my story and how it’s affected my family so much over the years was huge to me.”

Dickson is still, more than 25 years after she started, finding different ways to talk about being downwind and seeking others who lived it. She recently teamed with a local artist, Trent Alvey, collecting squares from clothing of downwinders who had cancer. They plan to hang these “Radiant Remnants” from poles for an exhibit to show both the emotion through words written on the remnants and the sheer number who suffered.

Alvey’s both artist and downwinder, raised in Mount Pleasant in central Utah. Most people, she said, have no idea how far around the globe the fallout went. She had breast cancer and her dad had esophageal cancer. She has a list of people she knew that cancer killed.

She applied for RECA. She said getting it “would mean I could help my two kids,” but wouldn’t make up for her own suffering battling breast cancer for five years or the loss of loved ones. It would, however, mean “someone acknowledged what I suffered due to government procedures, without getting to the right or wrong of any of that. It simply happened.”

Dickson agrees. “I want people to know how widespread the fallout was. It’s vital to know or there’s no incentive to stop it from happening again.”

She added, “My sense is you need your elected officials to be on your side and watch out for you. Josh Hawley epitomized what elected officials should do, standing up, not letting it be forgotten. Utah was the hardest hit really and Utah elected officials didn’t back it.”

Utah’s all-Republican congressional delegation opposed Hawley’s RECA reauthorization bill. It was somewhat modified and later folded into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which all six voted for.

At the Department of Justice

The DOJ is well behind on handling claims and is expected to hire a slew of claims processors soon.

The easy claims are processed first and approved. The others are reportedly being set aside temporarily.

As of June 30, 2026, under the expanded RECA the department has approved 6,563 claims total from downwinders, onsite participants, Manhattan Project waste and uranium workers. Another 33,654 are pending and 5 have been denied.

Under the original RECA, 42,596 were approved, 14,482 denied and 3 are pending.

The meaning in the misery

When Adams of the concerned scientist group called Dickson to tell her she would be compensated, Dickson cried, though she couldn’t explain why. Adams responded, “because so many people still didn’t get it and because your sister’s still dead.”

When asked what the losses and victories mean, Dickson paused to gather her thoughts.

“It’s hard to get everything I’m feeling into something concise,” she said.

“After 30 years of advocating for expansion, finally receiving compensation makes me feel heard. More than the money — which was never my motivation — this is about justice. At long last, more of us are being acknowledged as collateral damage of the Cold War. It’s a bittersweet victory. No amount of money can restore our health or bring back the people we’ve lost, but it matters that the government is finally acknowledging the harm it did to its own citizens.”

The greatest honor of her life, she said, has been helping downwinders receive not only restitution for what they and their families have suffered, but also validation that their pain and losses were real. And they matter.