If You Love This Planet, Dr. Helen Caldicott

Prof. Doug Brugge on the medical effects of uranium mining and how mining particularly harms Native peoples

 

Prof. Doug Brugge

Prof. Doug Brugge

This week’s guest is Doug Brugge, a professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the author of The Navajo People and Uranium Mining and the associate editor of the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health. His research includes studies of asthma; the impact of culture and language on health communication; the impact of environmental tobacco smoke; traffic pollution and cardiovascular disease; and the impact of uranium mining and processing on Native Americans. Prof. Brugge and Dr. Caldicott cover how they both started their antinuclear activism with Native peoples in the U.S. and Australia, respectively. Topics discussed in this episode include the health effects of radon, how uranium mining induces lung cancer, the cover-up of the harm caused to Native American uranium miners and their communities, the enlargement of uranium mining operations in Australia and elsewhere, and how Native peoples in many places, from India to Canada to North America and Australia, find themselves in harm’s way when their land is found to contain mineable uranium. Relevant to this interview are the articles Australia’s aboriginal communities clamour against uranium mining, Aborigines to block uranium mining after Japan disaster and Uranium Contamination Haunts Navajo Country,

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