Between 1946 and 1958 the United States tested 66 nuclear weapons on or near Bikini and Enewetak atolls, which had previously been evacuated. NCI investigators concluded, based on extensive analyses described in their publications, that populations living on any of the other atolls in the Marshall Islands archipelago were exposed to measurable radioactive fallout from 20 of those tests.
In this carefully considered analysis, National Cancer Institute (NCI) experts estimate that as much as 1.6% of all cancers among those residents of the Marshall Islands alive between 1948 and 1970 might be attributable to radiation exposures resulting from nuclear testing fallout. Due to uncertainly inherent to these analyses, the authors calculated a 90% confidence interval of 0.4% to 3.6%.
Marshall Islands Research Project and Findings - NCI