WASHINGTON The Senate on Thursday approved a measure that would, for the first time, give health care benefits and compensation to communities impacted by the test of the first atomic nuclear bomb in New Mexico.

The Trinity nuclear test is featured in Christopher Nolans latest hit movie Oppenheimer, which focuses on the life of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his role in leading the Manhattan Project, a top-secret U.S. government program that began during World War II.

What the film doesnt mention, however, is the array of deadly cancers that afflicted people exposed to radiation who lived downwind in the area near Alamogordo, New Mexico, for decades afterward many of whom were Native Americans and other people of color. The fallout traveled in a northern direction, affecting people as far away as Colorado, Idaho and Montana.

Millions of people across the country traveled to theaters this weekend to watch a blockbuster centered around this infamous day, but not enough people have focused on the collateral damage caused by our nations nuclear testing, New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Lujn said Thursday in a speech on the Senate floor.