After the recent cancellation of the ill-conceived Divine Strake test, a reporter asked me what was next for downwinders.

It didn't take me long to answer. "Now we push for the expansion of compensation."

If our recent victory showed anything, it is that when passionate people unite an on issue, they can make a difference. It's been 56 years since nuclear testing began at the Nevada Test Site, but downwinders are still waiting for justice to be served.

The Radiation Exposure Compensation Act provides compensation to downwinders in only 22 rural counties in southern Utah, southern Nevada and parts of northern Arizona -- a geographic designation that has always been far too limited. Confining compensation to this narrow corridor of the West has been one of the primary reasons that most Americans continue to erroneously assume this was the only area affected by radioactive fallout.

I suffered thyroid cancer and lost my sister to an autoimmune disease. When I tell people I am a downwinder, their first response is, "Oh, I didn't know you grew up in St. George." I grew up in Salt Lake City in an area where, at last count, 51 people suffered or died from various cancers and immune system diseases. I hear similar stories from people in Utah County, elsewhere in northern Utah and beyond the state's borders. None of us are covered by RECA, a program that has always been problematic.

RECA never was about justice. It was about political expediency. Fallout sickened and killed many more people than those who have been compensated under RECA.

A National Cancer Institute study released in 1997 bears out just how limited RECA is. According to the study, which was mandated by Congress, virtually every county in the continental United States received some level of fallout. A map from the study shows estimated doses of Iodine-131 to each county. Northern Utah is as red as southern Utah. In fact, high fallout counties in northern Utah, Idaho and Montana differ little in exposure levels and health consequences from RECA-eligible counties.

While we've known since the 1997 NCI study -- and even earlier -- that northern Utah got as much fallout as counties in southern Utah, Congress has done nothing to address RECA inequities.

In 1982, Larry Anderson, then director of the Bureau of Radiation Control, told Utah Holiday magazine that the early 1960s tests were conducted only when surface winds blew north, resulting in more fallout over northern Utah. "I am convinced," Anderson said, "that northern Utah has received every bit as much fallout as Southern Utah."

"No county line or barb wire fence stopped the fallout and neither should it be allowed to stop the application of justice for all those exposed," says Preston Truman, a downwinder in Malad, Idaho, who heads Downwinders United.

In April 2005, the National Academy of Sciences Board of Radiation Effects Research -- charged to resolve the issue of compensation expansion -- concluded that, in light of current knowledge, existing geographic boundaries for RECA make no sense because the entire country was affected. It was up to Congress to act on their findings, but nothing has happened. We are still waiting for compensation to be justly applied.

The case can easily be made that entire state of Utah, Idaho and Montana deserve to be part of RECA. There is no question that our government lied to us, misled us and endangered us during the years of nuclear testing in Nevada. Now, they have a responsibility to fairly and adequately compensate all those whose health they compromised.

I urge downwinders throughout these states to call on their Congressional delegations to address what can be done to obtain equal compensation for equal exposure for all downwinders.

We stopped Divine Strake. We can expand compensation. Justice demands it.

Mary Dickson is a downwinder and a writer. She lives in Salt Lake City.