Many of those who spoke Monday public hearing begged the committee to include their type of cancer or their county in the compensation program.

"Why do we have to keep on hurting people in this way?" asked Hazel Merrit, who belongs to the Utah Navajo Downwinders Association. "We've lost so many of our people to cancer. We're dealing with a weapon of mass destruction here. This stuff is dangerous. We're just asking for your help."

Anne Marie Frazier from the Navajo Nation said she feels like her people are being treated like guinea pigs.

"They do test after test and then tell us we don't qualify (for the program)," she said. "When we talk about downwind, I think it's unjustly labeled to be in just certain areas. The Navajo people were exposed to all kinds of radiation. Now we're being exposed to a nuclear waste dump near the reservation."

During the 1950s, Navajo children worked and played outside most of the day and into the night, she said.

"When the fallout drifted over the Four Corners area, we drank contaminated goat's milk. We were very grossly contaminated," Frazier said. "Today our people are dying from all different types of cancer. But some of us can't get compensation because of where we lived. That's not fair."

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