‘What we now know about the second half of the twentieth century compels us to tell the story of radiation effects in ways that acknowledge invisibility’, observe Jacob Darwin Hamblin and Linda Marie Richards (p. 3). Not only is radiation exposure invisible, but often so are those who experienced significant exposure. Scientific research, which the public might hope will bring clarity and certainty, seldom does so. Radiation health effects are contested across historical contexts and types of exposure, including situations where people are exposed to large doses and when exposure affects large populations (p. 1). Making the Unseen Visible illustrates the highly contested estimation of radiation health effects and the frequent social invisibility of the people affected by radioactive contamination.
The volume brings together accounts from diverse contexts to illustrate the often invisible plight of affected populations. It has three parts, with six to nine contributions each, including several poems, personal essays and first-hand accounts. The contributors include scholars and voices from outside academia. Most essays in the collection come from those who participated in one of three workshops organized as part of the 2017–21 Downwinders project at Oregon State University. Radiation exposure contexts discussed in the volume include nuclear plants in Washington and Colorado; bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the Chernobyl accident; nuclear mining in India, Kazakhstan and Ohio and on Indigenous lands in Utah; US atomic testing in the Marshall Islands; and French testing in the Algerian Sahara.
The chapters often build on each other. A series of essays, for example, focuses on health consequences for those exposed in the context of nuclear production and mining. Examples include India's oldest mines and former Soviet mines in Kazakhstan, Navajo uranium miners in Utah, and workers of the now closed Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant near Denver. The essays complement Gabrielle Hecht's Being Nuclear (2012) and Kate Brown's Plutopia (2013). Indeed, Plutopia is explicitly taken as an inspiration for the close side-by-side consideration of very different geopolitical contexts where nuclear industrial production generates remarkably similar patterns (p. 6).
The volume starts with accounts of exposure and health effects related to the now decommissioned Hanford nuclear plant near Richland, Washington, and returns to it in Part 3. The essay by Sarah Fox in Part 3 brings together the perspectives from Hanford and Nagasaki (where the bomb delivered plutonium from Hanford). Fox observes that ‘the bombing of Nagasaki and the multi-decade production of plutonium at the Hanford site resulted in generations of radiation-related health problems for local people in both places’ (p. 270).
Personal or first-hand accounts are complemented by essays with historical and anthropological analysis. Several of the scholarly contributions stand out. Joshua McGuffie's ‘The first accounts of radiation sickness’ focuses on the immediate health effects experienced by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors and the radically different perspectives of local doctors and the outside specialists from the Japanese and US militaries who failed to see acute radiation sickness as a disease. Magdalena Edyta Stawkowski considers the consequences of nuclear production in Kazakhstan, where whole towns were organized around the Soviet nuclear industry. Uranium mine closures led to economic degradation and deterioration of the infrastructure in these towns while nearby mines continued to affect residents’ health. Stawkowski's argument is about the ‘malignant infrastructures’ of these towns (p. 92), but it is also a striking account of the production of public invisibility and ignorance about radiation health effects. The local populations appear abandoned; only the dramatic ‘sleeping sickness’ (people falling asleep for days) brought media and research attention.
Joshua McMullan describes the practices of visualization of the post-Chernobyl radioactive contamination in sheep in north Wales. This essay articulates what arguably appears in other essays as well and what I have observed in the example of post-Chernobyl contamination in Belarus: some practices and conditions make radiation exposure and its health effects (more) publicly visible, while other practices and conditions obscure them and potentially make them unknowable. Some essays in the volume describe the production of public invisibility and ignorance about radiation exposure and its effects. Others also account for practices and conditions that drew attention to it, though in limited ways.
The volume's overarching message, however, is that the lack of public recognition of radiation health effects goes hand in hand with the invisibility of the exposed populations and their experiences. Essays on atomic testing and its postcolonial politics provide some striking examples. Desmond Narain Doulatram's essay on US testing in the Marshall Islands and Marshallese downwinders describes how the post-war status of the territories precluded local people from ‘US and international legal remedies’ (p. 228) while the US operations were shrouded in secrecy. This powerful essay describes the production of ignorance about the consequences of atomic testing for the health of the local population, along with the ongoing struggle for recognition and justice. Similarly, Austin R. Cooper's ‘How to hide a nuclear explosion’ focuses on the policy of secrecy and classification that helped obscure the consequences of the 1960 French atomic testing in the Algerian Sahara. The essay by Matthew Adamson accounts for the perspective of Morocco and other former colonies, which did not share the French view of the testing area as empty spaces devoid of inhabitants.
The volume delivers what it promises: a powerful picture of the sites where the accounts of those affected have been made publicly invisible. It is a critical contribution demonstrating the variety of contexts where radiation, its health effects and exposed populations remain publicly invisible and ignored. Perhaps most importantly, radiation exposure is made invisible by situations of significant power imbalance and colonial and racial prejudice. While the editors could further articulate these themes in a volume introduction or provide a conclusion, the essays offer a noteworthy illustration. The question of what is made in/visible, and how, is the question for further discussion that this volume will ignite.
