New concern over the dangers of low-level radiation
During the early 1950s, parents in the little town of St. George in southwestern Utah often woke their children up at 6 a.m., hustled them to the top of Black Hill on the western edge of the community, and let them watch the mushroom clouds rising into the dawn sky over the atomic-bomb testing site in neighboring Nevada. When a pinkish-red cloud drifted over St. George hours later, the parents were not frightened; after all, the Atomic Energy Commission had assured them that "there is no danger" from radioactive fallout. Some parents even held...