KINGMAN, AZ — There is another push in Congress to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, known as RECA. It provided screenings and compensation to people affected by radiation exposure from nuclear testing sites before Congress let it expire last year.
Now there are new efforts from bring RECA back. A second bill coming from an lawmaker in Arizona, pushes to reauthorize RECA. Representative Paul Gosar introduced the Downwinders Parity Act, which also asks that RECA cover people in parts of Arizona that have been excluded in the past.
Eddie Pattillo was a lifelong resident of Kingman, but his son, Cullin Pattillo, says that came with a 30-year battle against cancer.
“He fought metastatic bladder cancer, liver cancer and colon cancer that entire time,” Pattillo said.
Pattillo says his dad was one of many family members to fall sick from radiation exposure.
“My father and all of his cohorts were little kids in 1952 going to Kingman grammar school in downtown Kingman, and the federal government thought it would be a good idea to explode nuclear bombs 120 miles to the north of them,” he said.
His dad frequently traveled four hours to get treatment in the Phoenix area, but he died in 2022.
“I'm estimating that my dad, you know, died at least 10 years early, maybe more than that,” Pattillo said.
Despite living a life his son says was altered by radiation exposure, Eddie Pattillo never got access to compensation or screenings through RECA. The part of Mohave County where he lived was excluded from coverage.
“It is a very arbitrary and capricious boundary they came up,” Pattillo said.
That is something Rep. Gosar wants to change with the Downwinders Parity Act. The Congressman says the legislation would correct oversight in the original RECA Act of 1990 that excluded areas of Mohave County.
“RECA failed to properly define the boundaries of impacted populations and many downwinders that resided in counties in close proximity to where the testing occurred, including in Mohave County, Arizona and Clark County, Nevada, were mistakenly excluded from the program for no logical reason,” Rep. Gosar (AZ-09) said in a statement.
“Not only were downwinders residing in Mohave and Clark counties closer to the Nevada Test Site than residents in other eligible counties, but they also have the second-highest overall incidence rate of cancer in their respective states,” Rep. Gosar’s statement continues.
You can read Rep. Gosar’s full statement and see the text of the bill here.
“This is something that we've been fighting for 34 years now, 35 years,” Pattillo said.
Rep. Gosar’s bill is one of two pieces of legislation that aim to extend RECA after it expired last year. Senator Mark Kelly is another Arizona lawmaker behind a different bill in the Senate.
Pattillo, who saw his dad battle cancer without any RECA support, says he supports both pieces of legislation.
“They would finally acknowledge an entire generation of people that they poisoned,” Pattillo said.
Pattillo, saying extending coverage to his hometown of Kingman, would mean everything.
