Exposure Awareness

We are but a few of the Survivors of the 1977-1980 Enewetak Atoll Atomic Debris Cleanup Mission in the Marshall Islands.

Our main focus is to help each other with information and moral support during challenging times.

Our secondary focus is to urge Congress to change the current laws and recognize soldiers of the cleanup mission as “veterans who participated in radiation-risk activities during active service.”

Exposure Awareness is more commonly known in the business world as Public Relations.

Exposure Awareness is a key factor for our group of Atomic Cleanup Veterans to become recognised as “veterans who participated in radiation-risk activities during active service or while members of reserve components during active duty for training or inactive duty training.”

Currently, all military veterans who participated in The 1977 – 1980 Enewetak Atoll Atomic Cleanup Mission are defined by the Veterans Administration as Occupational Radiation Exposed Veterans.

We do not believe the manual laborers and heavy equipment operators who moved radioactive debris by hand and equipment with next to no radiation protection should be considered as having “Occupational” exposure to radiation.

More and more of us are speaking out in an attempt to “get the word out” so our group of Atomic Cleanup Veterans can be recognised as working in radiation-risk activities while cleaning up after the 44 Atomic Bombs that scattered radiation over Enewetak Atoll during the Cold War.

We have already achieved much Exposure Awareness by creating a Facebook Group and a Facebook Fan Page in addition to creating the AtomicCleanupVets.com website.

One of easiest ways of increasing Exposure Awareness is to share information from our AtomicCleanupVets.com website on social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Google+. Sharing our pages is easy when you use the sharing feature you find near the bottom of each webpage.

Commenting on international and national news and magazine websites is another method for increasing Exposure Awareness. The main rule of thumb is to not spam them by commenting on articles that have nothing to do with our struggles with the Veterans Administration.

There are plenty of internet articles about the Veterans Administration, the Marshall Islands, Enewetak Atoll, Nuclear Disarmament, Radiation Risks, etc… to comment upon.

Most of those websites give you the ability to include a link to a website (like AtomicCleanupVets.com) within your comments or membership profile. I believe if they give you the opportunity, then by all means, add the link to our website.

I also believe everyone who comments on articles should have a profile photo of themselves instead of a silhouette or whatever random image a website shows when you do not have a profile photo. A photo of yourself makes readers feel like you are a person they can trust.

Gravatar.com offers an excellant service that will automatically show a photo of your choice when you comment on website articles. It is free and quick to create. If you use more than one email address, you can use a different photo for each of your email addresses.

I encourage everyone to watch this video introduction about Gravatar and take a few minutes to create your own international profile:

 Now, go find your favorite webpage at AtomicCleanupVets.com and share it in your comments on one of the major news websites who have posted articles you feel are good places to increase Exposure Awareness about Atomic Cleanup Veterans.

We urge our supporters to encourage their politicians to create legislation which will include all Marshall Island Atomic Cleanup Veterans in the U.S. Government Veterans Administration’s definition of a veteran “who participated in radiation-risk activities during active service.”

Article written by Girard Frank Bolton, III. 1977-1979 participant with C Company and HHC S-3 (Operations) 84th Engineer Battalion (Combat Heavy) (Fwd) Enewetak Atoll, Marshall Islands.

One thought on “Exposure Awareness”

  1. I was on Enewetak Main island in the 3 story brick building when the Typhon hit. I remember the windows on the ocean side of the building being blown out and a fine layer of dust settling on everything inside the building about a 8th of an inch thick. No concern was given to prevent inhalation of this dust. I often wonder about this dust containing radioactive particals. I also worked on the Larks and other LCU’s and LCM’s as they arrived and departed The main Island, I supervised the loading and unloading of these ships and again wondered about exposer to radiation because these same ship’s dropped radioactive waste in the lagoon and at Runit. Further during the Typhon the rest of my platoon’s building on the lagoon side was almost totally destroyed and had to be evacuated during the middle of the storm. Prior to my departure to Enewetak and upon my return to the states I was given one of the most extensive physicals I have ever had. Wonder what ever happened to the results of those physicals because in less than two weeks upon my return went to get copy of them, but was told they where not in my records. I am currently having under active thyroid gland problems. Which is high on list of issue’s with exposure to radioactive exposure. By the way I was U.S. Army not U.S. Navy.

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