Air, water and pollution in St George, Utah (Salt Lake City, St. George: 2014, living)

[CedarCityUtahRez]

Originally Posted by Aerorick

Crimany Christmas! The Duke died from a cancer that started from an experiance in St. George? "Cedar", please tell me what John Wayne movie was ever filmed in St. George. St. George wasn't even a speck on the map in the 50's. Or even the 60's. All the Dukes' Utah location movies were filmed at Monument Valley. And that's way over on the Southeast corner of the state. With a healthy buffer of mountains between there and Nevada.
Crimany, while I'll be the first to say that the nuclear testing of the fifty's was responcible for harm than the government wants to admit. I'd say that today with the constant convenent diet of pure fat enriched fast food, processed vegetables and mowing the lawn once a week for exercise much more of an issue for health problems than atomic testing 50 years ago.

I'd personally take my chances with fastfood and lawnmowing, once a week...PLUS...you're comparing choices of eating/exercise to what was just dumped on an area, unfairly.



This is from the Deseret: Toxic Utah
Toxic Utah: Ghosts in the wind

"Utahns have experienced an epidemic of cancer and other radiation-related illnesses as a result of radioactive fallout from U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) nuclear weapons testing in the Fifties and Sixties. AEC's dishonesty and manipulation of information are indelible lessons. We are painfully aware of the risks we face from high-level nuclear waste." — Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, Nov. 9, 2000, in a letter to the Minnesota Public Utility Commission opposing Private Fuel Storage LLC's proposal for a spent nuclear fuel storage facility in Utah.

That magnificent Washington County, feature of spectacular scenic postcards and landscape legends, was also the place where the U.S. government's own Atomic Energy Commission perpetuated some of the nation's ugliest health and environmental atrocities;

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The Straight Dope: Did John Wayne die of cancer caused by a radioactive movie set?
The Conqueror is the movie.

But the worst didn't become apparent until long afterward. In 1953, the military had tested 11 atomic bombs at Yucca Flats, Nevada, which resulted in immense clouds of fallout floating downwind. Much of the deadly dust funneled into Snow Canyon, Utah, where a lot of The Conqueror was shot. The actors and crew were exposed to the stuff for 13 weeks, no doubt inhaling a fair amount of it in the process, and Hughes later shipped 60 tons of hot dirt back to Hollywood to use on a set for retakes, thus making things even worse.

Many people involved in the production knew about the radiation (there's a picture of Wayne himself operating a Geiger counter during the filming), but no one took the threat seriously at the time. Thirty years later, however, half the residents of St. George had contracted cancer, and veterans of the production began to realize they were in trouble. Actor Pedro Armendariz developed cancer of the kidney only four years after the movie was completed, and later shot himself when he learned his condition was terminal.

Howard Hughes was said to have felt "guilty as hell" about the whole affair, although as far as I can tell it never occurred to anyone to sue him. For various reasons he withdrew The Conqueror from circulation, and for years thereafter the only person who saw it was Hughes himself, who screened it night after night during his paranoid last years.

Snow Canyon State Park
Just 10 minutes north of St. George is Snow Canyon State Park.

[coolcats]

Kanab was a (maybe "the") center of Westerns during the 50's and 60's. It is only a few miles as the crow flies east of St. George. There are also some ghost towns in the area that were used for films.

[Aerorick]

I stand educated.

[Badland wonder]

There are Lots of gardens in Cedar City and surrounding areas. The soil is poor because of all the iron. Cedar was doing pretty good until the iron mines closed in the 80s. Now they have experienced a new spurt, along with Washington County and Las Vegas. The housing market is not cheap. It has come down this last year to about what it should be. Utah has Tons of uranium. Maybe a geiger counter picked up some "hot" rocks. Movies in the early southwest could have been filmed in and around the area...Kanab, Lake Powell (old movie site is now under water), Monument Valley, etc.

[cshare]

St George is a wonderful area, clean air, very low pollution. The county heavily invests tax dollars to keeping it clean. Very hot in the summer, hardly ever rains, occassional dust storms on hot summer days. There are scientific studies that show the entire USA was effected by the nuclear blasts. Very unlikely to be effected by that now. A ton of gardens, basically everyone I know has a garden of some type. A whole chunk of this city is nothing but farms, turf, corn, alfalfa, dairy. Expensive to live in however 5% higher than the national average, but that is because it is beautiful, right inbetween multiple National and State parks, St George might as well be one of them.

[cshare]

As for John Wayne, most of his movies were filmed in Kanab, but St George was used on occasion but not listed. Friends of mine were invovlved in the filming.

[kerrymac]

Umm does any1 remember that the Duke smoked like a chimney?

[markg91359]

The John Wayne movie referred too is an old movie known as "The Conquerors". Its a bad B flick don't try and watch it.

The story about "the Duke" is much more complicated. John Wayne died in 1978 after living for over fourteen years with lung cancer. Some have speculated that the cancer had something to do with radioactive fallout. Its highly unlikely. John himself attributed his lung cancer to a far more likely cause--cigarette smoking. John was addicted to tobacco and for a time smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day. There is a correlation between cancer and radioactivity. However, it is ordinarily linked to a few very specific cancers. For example, Leukemia has some correlation to radioactivity. Some forms of bone cancer are related. Lymphoma and thyroid cancer would be highly suspect as well.

Radioactivity obviously is not good for people. However, if we keep our perspective we soon discover that the most common causes of cancer are things like tobacco useage and a family history where other relatives had cancer. Many people in southern Utah probably developed cancer from atomic testing. Its unlikely John Wayne was one.
















interpose: interesting comments, mark. thanks for posting. However, to keep from getting this thread going in a different direction, from this point down, anybody posting to this thread from this point, let's keep the subject germane to St. George. Thanks!

[Tiger Beer]

Originally Posted by CedarCityUtahRez

St. George received worse Nuke fallout (being downwinders) than Cedar City, from what I've read. That is why St. George remained much smaller than Cedar City for years. The workers who put in the freeway (my dad is a personal friend of one) said that people were terrified to drink the water from St. George and would buy bottled. Everyone was afraid of Cancer. There was a film crew that filmed in St. George with John Wayne as one of the actors...all later died of cancer and some theorists believe that St. George have those nuke issues was the reason. Go ahead and google it.

That being said, I know a long time resident of Cedar City and she says that everyone knew at least one family with at least one child who had Cancer. She says it was horrible to have so many children die of cancer. She also said that people in these areas didn't have gardens for those reasons....and that's why the milk is still coming from Vegas.

That was another reason that housing stayed so cheap.....people couldn't give their houses away living in a Cancer Cluster.

The Straight Dope: Did John Wayne die of cancer caused by a radioactive movie set?

Radiation Death and Deception

Legacy of radiation illness stir objection to Nevada bomb test | HEAL Utah

portland imc - 2005.10.27 - Downwinders of Nevada Test Site nuclear fallout

John Wayne

Thanks for the great references and data! Exactly what I was looking for.

[thitzler]

Sperling's posts data and does city-to-city comparisons on many factors, including air and water quality on thier Web Site. The air and water quality data is derived from the EPA and as of June 2010 St George's water quality was 73 (US avg was 48) out of 100. Air Quality was not so good. It was 23 (US avg 48).

As for the radiation, I have read that the nuclear bomb tests were so long ago that the residual radiation is very low and essentially the same as other areas of the US that did not test nuclear bombs. In other words, if the data is credible, there is no current risk.