St. Louis-area activists have been fighting for years to get government compensation for people with cancer and other serious illnesses potentially connected to Manhattan Project nuclear contamination. This week marked a major victory, with support coming from the president.
Uranium was processed in St. Louis starting at the onset of World War II as America raced to develop nuclear bombs. In July, reporting as part of an ongoing collaboration between The Missouri Independent, the nonprofit newsroom MuckRock and The Associated Press cited thousands of pages of documents indicating decades of nonchalance and indifference for the risks posed by uranium contamination. The government documents were obtained by outside researchers through the Freedom of Information Act and shared with the news organizations.
