Nuclear missile workers are contracting cancer

An Air Force firefighter repels down a training missile silo during a training exercise at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming on Oct. 26, 2024. Photo by Hunter C. Kirkland/U.S. Air Force
An Air Force firefighter repels down a training missile silo during a training exercise at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming on Oct. 26, 2024. Photo by Hunter C. Kirkland/U.S. Air Force

They blame the bases

By Patricia Kime, KFF Health News/North Dakota Monitor At a memorial service in 2022, veteran Air Force Capt. Monte Watts bumped into a fellow former Minuteman III nuclear missile operator, who told him that she had non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Watts knew other missileers with similar cancers. But the connection really hit home later that same January day, when the results of a blood t…