Could the high number of breast cancers be connected to the required chest x-rays baby-boomers were required to take to graduate high school?

its possible. medicine in the 50s was not so advanced and people didnt know the all dangers of radiation back then. but i never heard of this requirement to graduate. where was this?

I think it has more too do with people’s modern eating habits (preserved crap), a lack of exercise, and the fact that every generation is living longer than the previous.

But really these things are so hard to pin point, considering the sheer volume of potential triggers.

You get more radiation from a cross-country trip in an airplane than you do from a single chest X-ray. A couple of days in the woods would also give you the same amount of radiation. We are constantly getting background radiation from everything around us. The sun, the ground, rocks, food – everything gives off radiation.

As for bomb testing, radiation from a nuclear blast above ground has a limited amount of distance it can travel before decay. There were 201 above-ground tests conducted by the United States between 1945 and 1992, the vast majority of which were done either in the deserts of Nevada (away from population centers) or on islands in the Pacific. Only the initial weapon tests in 1945 were done in New Mexico, while Mississippi and Colorado saw peaceful application tests (not true bomb explosions).

Based on the best available data, there is no risk to the general population from atomic weapons testing, simply because they weren’t done near populated regions. Those involved or servicing the base around it, sure, but not the general population.

I doubt there’s a direct link, although one can’t rule out that it may be a contributing factor. There’s not been such a practice in north/western Europe in my time, yet breast cancer is one of the more common types of cancer – and the ad campaigns tell us 1 in 3 will contract cancer…

Thanks for your responses. I appreciate hearing different ideas on this—and knowledgeable ones as well.
@Mtl zack: This was in Scarsdale High School, New York. 1962 and I don’t know for how many years this practice was in effect.