evaphoto wrote:When I was reading about the nuclear tests being conducted in the Nevada desert in the 40's and 50's, about 2 years ago, i suddenly thought, what about all he dust one gets into his/her lungs during the week at Burning Man? . . .
A good question and a reasonable concern Evaphoto. I have had the same concerns in the past but not so much now. Here is my two cents on the subject:
The Nevada Test Site where the U.S. has conducted the vast majority of its atmospheric tests (in the 1950s) and below grown tests until all of its testing ceased in 1992 is due east of Beatty, Nevada. Beatty, Nevada is about 385 miles southeast of Black Rock City. In other words, almost all of the nuclear detonations in the continental U.S. took place even farther from Burning Man than is San Francisco.
More importantly, most of the fallout from those nuclear tests blew west and northwest from the Nevada Test Site. This map showing the results of a National Cancer Institute study of radioactive fallout strongly suggests that Black Rock City is nowhere near as irradiated as are the Great Plains and Intermountain states of the U.S.:
http://ndep.nv.gov/boff/radexp01.gif .
There was one underground test (The Project Shoal test) about 100 miles east of Carson City Nevada in 1963 but that is still over a hundred miles south of BRC. Plus, most of the radioactivity from that explosion went into the groundwater, not the air.
Southern Nevada has some pretty serious nuclear pollution (
http://virtualglobetrotting.com/map/nev ... test-site/ ) but any radioactivity in the vicinity of Burning Man is comparatively much, much lower.
