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I recently had this article come across my newsfeed:

I always wondered about the high rates of cancer and diabetes in my neighborhood, and in other Black neighborhoods. These diseases are not inherent in people of African descent. [...] I long believed environmental factors played a huge part in the mortality rate of my beloved Harlem residents… so to come across this … as you can imagine, floored me and left me speechless.

Below, an unsourced video snippet with an unnamed woman speaking about this infographic of diabetes in New York.

She claims:

after Chernobyl, [...] the state milk boards are taking the most contaminated radioactive milk from dairies near nuclear power plants and they're shipping that into Black inner-city communities [...]

She implies that this is causing diabetes, as part of a deliberate genocide effort by the government.

Is the milk sold in inner-city communities in New York more highly contaminated by radioactivity?

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  • 8
    Without knowing who is speaking in the video and under what circumstances, it's likely this doesn't constitute a notable claim.
    – DJClayworth
    Apr 11, 2015 at 18:17
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    Also, there is a link to the "full 2 hour presentation", but at the time of writing, it is a private YouTube video.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Apr 12, 2015 at 0:08
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    Another point: while the blog headline says radiated, the video claim is radioactive, which is different.
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Apr 12, 2015 at 2:30
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    Does "inner city black neighbourhood" even apply to New York City anymore? Isn't it highly gentrified now? I know this still applies to other American cities, but the uber-dense megacities not so much anymore. I also doubt the claim of shipping milk from the other side of the world - it would be tremendously expensive, or spoil before arrival in most cases.
    – Ernie
    Jun 20, 2017 at 14:38
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    What about the radioactive bananas?
    – JAB
    Jun 20, 2017 at 17:35

1 Answer 1

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This is not a complete answer; perhaps if someone has a copy of the book they can build on this. I've been unable to find the full text for the original claim and its methodology.

The statements and maps in the video are apparently based on this site:

[source: New York Times Jan. 9, 20061 Global diabetes map from NY Times Jan 9, 2006.] Its a fallout/rainout map from atmospheric testing radiation and you can see that the jet stream is the main transport mechanism. US map indicates that the highest diabetes rates in the US are along the Gulf Coast states where the Depleted Uranium is carried across the Atlantic on Westerlies and rained out where the highest rainfall occurs along the Gulf Coast. Basically the US Govt. is shipping the most radioactive milk from dairies around nuke plants into black and poor inner city communities. Wash. DC looks the same and we have proved it with US Govt. measurements of rad in milk by city. [Jay Gould, DEADLY DECEIT: LOW LEVEL RADIATION HIGH LEVEL COVERUP, Chapter "Infant Mortality and Milk"]

The book referenced in the above quote is "Deadly Deceit: Low-level Radiation, High-level Cover-up" (1991; on Amazon.com).

The review below is not technically proof against the claim, but it is a fairly solid academic criticism of it:

This small book is another in the genre of less is more, and there is an enormous conspiracy to cover up that fact.

The authors clearly abhor all things nuclear and have collected and searched through a huge databank seeking any and all variations in disease occurrence, which are then causally attributed to low-level ionizing radiation. In fact, they have attributed so many diseases and infections that it appears to be a situation in which some radiation event occurred and they searched until they found a disease, any disease, that increased during that time.

Claims that the first identification of or increases in occurrence of specific diseases must be the result of low-level radiation seem to me to be examples of the "wish bias."1 Diseases such as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), allergies, Lyme disease, chronic Epstein-Barr virus infection, toxic shock syndrome, Candida albicans infection, herpes, and pelvic inflammatory disease

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  • What's "wish bias"? I could guess, but a clear definition would be really nice?
    – Malady
    Oct 5, 2017 at 3:13
  • @Malandy Looks like they meant wishful thinking, or perhaps a bias toward wishful thinking.
    – Nat
    Oct 5, 2017 at 3:43
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    @Malandy - medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Wish+Bias
    – Daniel R Hicks
    Oct 5, 2017 at 23:30
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    Depleted uranium being carried by breezes? This is the densest naturally occurring element there is, right? Not a criticism of the answer, BTW, just the idiot being quoted.
    – PoloHoleSet
    Dec 7, 2018 at 17:58

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