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St. Louis Blues

As Fire Inches toward Dump Site and Cancer Numbers Rise, Community Groups Push for Resolution of Manhattan Project Contamination
Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2015-2016
By Arianne Peterson 

Current and former residents of North St. Louis County, Missouri—where tons of radioactively contaminated Manhattan Project waste were dumped starting in the 1940s—are gaining traction in their efforts to pressure leaders to take responsibility for the widespread contamination in their communities. Local organizers have made progress recently on two related, urgent issues: 1) Clean-up of waste dumped at the West Lake Landfill site, where an underground fire in the neighboring Bridgeton landfill is inching ever closer to the radioactive materials; and 2) Achieving recognition and support for those who have developed illnesses related to the contamination in and around Coldwater Creek, which runs through North St. Louis County.

West Lake Landfill 

Concerned citizens including the group Just Moms STL and the Missouri Coalition for the Environment have successfully lobbied the state’s congressional delegation to introduce a bill (HR 4100) that would transfer remediation authority of the West Lake Landfill site—which holds over 40,000 tons of contaminated soil at surface level—from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Army Corps of Engineers. The bill was introduced November 25 with support from Representatives Ann Wagner and William Lacy Clay and Senators Roy Blunt and Claire McCaskill.

The West Lake Landfill is just one of many sites in the St. Louis area contaminated by waste left over from uranium processing done by Mallinckrodt Chemical Works for the Manhattan Project in the 1940s. While clean-up of the other sites falls under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers under the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP), the West Lake site formerly did not meet the program’s criteria and instead was designated an EPA Superfund site.

But residents have not been happy with the EPA’s handling of the West Lake waste, which is about 1,000 feet away from a “subsurface smoldering event” that has been burning for over four years at the neighboring Bridgeton Landfill—owned by Republic Services. In 2008, the EPA Region 7 issued a Record of Decision saying it planned to leave the waste in place and cover it with a “cap” of rock, clay, and soil. In a press release about the new legislation, Representative Clay said, “It just makes no sense to allow radioactive waste to remain buried in an unlined landfill, near residential neighborhoods, schools, a hospital, the airport and the Missouri River. It’s time to clean up West Lake Landfill.”

Sen. Blunt said, “The EPA’s unacceptable delay in implementing a solution for the West Lake landfill has destroyed its credibility, and it is time to change course.”

Dawn Chapman of Just Moms STL expressed further frustration with the EPA, saying, “It was clear in May—when head of the EPA, Gina McCarthy, refused to meet with Just Moms STL even after a bipartisan letter was written requesting such a meeting—that EPA’s main focus remained on public relations rather than on being an advocate for our children.”

Just Moms STL has higher hopes for FUSRAP, which is handling the city’s other Manhattan Project waste cleanup sites, but the group recognizes it has a long way to go before their community is made safe. Group member Karen Nickel said, “While we see this as a victory, we still have families living within one mile of this dangerous site, we still have radioactive trees offsite, and we still have an out-of-control burning Superfund site/landfill with very hazardous materials.”

Local residents certainly have cause for concern. In 2014, the EPA released an analysis of what could happen if the underground fire reaches West Lake’s radioactive waste. The study said, “since no one knows what else is mixed in with the radioactive waste, a subsurface fire could potentially react with those unknown substances, causing an explosion.” It also found that high temperatures could cause the proposed cap over the waste to crack, and/or create a buildup of pressure that would force out radioactive gasses. A fire at West Lake would also cause more liquid to build up in the landfill, which could carry contamination away from the site and into groundwater. The EPA has promised to release its plan for dealing with the situation by the end of 2016.

In September 2015, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster released new reports supporting the state’s ongoing lawsuit against Bridgeton Landfill owner Republic Services for negligence and environmental violations related to the ongoing fire. Among the more alarming pieces of evidence added to the lawsuit, as reported by Missouri Public Radio, were:

  • Radiological and organic contamination has been detected in trees on properties neighboring the landfill;
  • Volatile organic compounds, also known as VOCs, have been found in “high concentrations” in the groundwater in wells outside the perimeter of the landfill. Those contaminants include benzene, acetone, and 2-butanone.
  • The underground “fire”—or high-temperature chemical reaction—in the Bridgeton Landfill is expanding north, toward the radioactive waste in the adjacent West Lake Landfill and has already moved beyond the gas interceptor wells in the “neck” of the landfill that are intended to stop its spread;
  • Republic Services has negligently contributed to the growth of the underground reaction by “aggressively over-extracting the gas system well outside industry best practices.”

The state’s suit was filed in 2013 and is scheduled for trial in March 2016. It seeks penalties, actual damages, and punitive damages from Republic Services for the company’s allegedly unlawful conduct.

Those who live near the landfills currently complain of headaches, nosebleeds, and horrible smells coming from the burning area. An unrelated brush fire at West Lake on October 24, and an 11,000-gallon sewage spill at Bridgeton October 27, only served to heighten local concerns about the management of the situation. St. Louis County officials, intending to reassure the public, released an emergency contingency plan in October outlining what to do if the fire reaches the waste. The plan only aggravated some residents’ concerns. Student activist Elaine Emmerich said, “There’s an official 104-page evacuation plan, but no one really knows what could happen [if the fire reaches the radioactive waste], since it all comes down to complete chance about which direction the winds are blowing that day.”

This meme, posted in 2013 on the Missouri Coalition for the Environment website, depicts the West Lake Landfill Manhattan Project waste dump site using the round radiation symbol in a series of maps. Each shows a potential disaster that threaten to disperse the more than 40,000 tons of radioactively contaminated soil that are stored at surface level in the unlined dump site.

The proposal to transfer control of West Lake from the EPA to FUSRAP [within the Department of Defense] does not alter the site’s Superfund status and does not transfer the liability of those potentially responsible for the damages. Based on the site’s history, the question of liability may boil down to a finger-pointing match between nuclear utility giant Exelon and the Department of Energy (DOE). Exelon holds the liability for the former Cotter Corporation, which hired the contractor that originally dumped the waste. The DOE retains liability for its predecessor the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which released Cotter Corp. from its license to hold the material despite knowing that it was dumped without authorization.

The radioactive material at West Lake includes 8,700 tons of barium sulfate left over from the Belgian Congo Pitch Blend uranium ore—after Mallinckrodt C.W. extracted its uranium for the Manhattan Project. Starting in 1946, 133,000 tons of these byproducts were dumped at the St. Louis Airport site. In 1962, the AEC auctioned off 125,000 tons of the Airport waste to private companies. Cotter Corp. acquired some of the material and shipped much of it back to its home state of Colorado, leaving 8,700 tons of barium sulfate—which contained several tons of uranium—at a site on Latty Avenue, near the Airport. In 1973, Cotter Corp. mixed this material with 40,000 tons of topsoil from the Latty Avenue site and hauled it in dump trucks to West Lake, telling the landfill operator they were bringing “clean fill” that could be used to cover other refuse.

In 1974, Cotter Corp. told the AEC that it was disposing of the material in a landfill. According to AEC records, the agency recommended citing Cotter for disobeying the intent of its regulations. However, later that same year, the AEC released Cotter from the license it held for the Latty Avenue materials. A month later, the AEC was dissolved, and its duties were assigned to the newly formed Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The idea of taking action against the unauthorized dumping at West Lake apparently got lost in the transition.

Doug Clemens, chair of the community advisory group associated with the EPA cleanup, feels the DOE is shirking its responsibility for the West Lake waste. “This was permitted by the federal government and created by the federal government under a weapons program,” he said. “It’s their waste and they’re responsible for it.” The DOE had specifically excluded West Lake from the FUSRAP charged with cleaning up Manhattan Project sites, possibly because the material was owned by a private company. A 1993 DOE memo stated that the agency “remains firm in its position that it is not admitting liability for the West Lake Landfill contamination”; a 1992 memo called the West Lake dumping “a license violation” that “would not have been authorized if licensing approval had been sought.”

Kay Drey, who has researched the weapons waste in St. Louis since the 1970s and is a board member at Beyond Nuclear, feels the US government has both a moral and fiscal responsibility for cleaning up the waste produced by its weapons program. “To me, it’s very clear that this was a federal responsibility,” she told St. Louis Today. “Unfortunately, the Atomic Energy Commission and the NRC didn’t follow through and pay attention to what was at Latty Avenue and then dumped at West Lake Landfill.”

Coldwater Creek Contamination 

The same uranium processing waste generated by Mallinckrodt Chemical Works for atomic bomb production that was dumped at West Lake was dumped in many other sites as well, and residents who were exposed to radiation in the 1970s and 1980s—many of whom came in regular contact with Coldwater Creek, a tributary of the Missouri River—are now facing an alarming number of rare illnesses.

After years of organizing efforts to put pressure on government officials to take responsibility for the devastating effects thought to stem from residents’ exposure, activists with Coldwater Creek Facts have succeeded in involving the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) in studying their case. In the agency’s first meeting with community members December 2, officials reassured them that their investigation would not be influenced by other government agencies that may seek to avoid responsibility for the problem. Erin Evans, an ADSTR environmental health specialist, told residents, “We are an independent, non-regulatory agency. I get my pressure from you.” She also said, “Hopefully this helps us say these illnesses that we’re seeing in this community may have been caused by this environmental contamination.”

2015 map of illnesses suffered by current and former residents who lived near Coldwater Creek. From www.coldwatercreekfacts.com.

In 2011, current and former residents of the area who grew up near the Creek in the 1970s and 1980s began to notice a high incidence of rare cancers among their relatively young peer group. They started a Facebook group called “Coldwater Creek—Just the Facts Please” to reach out to others who were experiencing similar health issues and begin gathering data. Four years later, the group has over 12,000 members and has documented 2,725 cases of cancers and autoimmune diseases. Forty-five of these are cases of appendix cancer, which is staggering considering the regular incidence of this disease is less than one in 100,000.

A 2013 study by the Missouri Department of Health effectively dismissed the group’s concerns, attributing the high cancer rates to lifestyle factors like smoking and poor diet. After pointing out the flaws of the study, which only considered the diseases diagnosed among those who lived near the Creek from 1996 to 2004—after cleanup efforts were well underway—and failed to consider the major portion of the population that had moved away from the area since their exposure.

Members of the group hope the ATSDR study—which is expected to take 18 to 24 months—will bring them closer to gaining some federal support for those suffering from the effects of contamination resulting from the government’s atomic bomb production. The group is pushing the federal government to recognize their “Downwinder” status under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) for those suffering from radiation exposure stemming from the government’s Manhattan Project. RECA, administered by the Department of Justice, entitles those it recognizes as having contracted certain diseases after exposure to up to $100,000 in damages.

Organizers are also working to educate health care professionals in the area on the effects of residents’ exposure and how to best serve this unique population. On November 30, St. Louis County Public Health Director Faisal Khan responded to community concerns and published a blog post addressing area physicians, sharing recommendations for action and educational resources.

While they keep pressure on federal, state, and local authorities, group members continue to advocate for and support each other through their Facebook page, which contains four years’ worth of devastating stories from those who are sick themselves and/or have lost loved ones to cancer and other diseases. A comment posted by Facebook user Julie Winters on October 22 is a typical post for the page: “My sister died at age 30 from liver cancer. My Mother at 55 from ovarian cancer. My Father age 58 from lung cancer. And last, I had triple negative breast cancer at 45. The stupid creek ran behind our house and I use to catch tadpoles as a kid…….until they suddenly all disappeared. Hmmmm. What do you all think??? Insane!!”

The Coldwater Creek contamination is recognized under FUSRAP, and the Army Corps of Engineers is working to clean up the sources of its contamination. Meanwhile, many current residents living near both the Creek and the West Lake Landfill are struggling to figure out how to move their families away from the radiation given the reality that no one is likely to want to buy or live in their homes. Though both groups are engaged in a fight for their lives, they recognize that their struggles stem from a much bigger problem: the criminal negligence of the federal governments nuclear weapons program. As Facebook user Scott Koeneman posted on the Coldwater Creek page December 2: “All I know is this: West Lake Landfill, and Coldwater Creek, both have, or had, the exact same waste buried in it that my grandfather worked on during the Manhattan Project & the Cold War at Mallinckrodt. It’s the same waste that killed him, and it’s the same waste that is killing you.”

Sources: St. Louis Public Radio, Mar. 31, 2014, Sept. 3 & Nov. 3, 2015; Missouri Attorney General Press Release, Sept. 3; Quartz, Oct. 29; STL Today, Nov. 2; Student Life (WashU), Nov. 9; Byron DeLear Interview on Antidote (YouTube), Nov. 9; KDSK News, Nov. 10; PoliticalNews, Nov. 25; Washington Univ. Institute for Public Health Blog, Nov. 30; St. Louis American, Dec. 3; AP, Dec. 4; US Dept. of Justice RECA Website, Dec. 4, 2015

Editor’s Note: Nukewatch has reported on both the Coldwater Creek contamination and the West Lake dump site regularly in the Quarterly since 2013. We are encouraged by the recent progress made by these citizens’ groups as well as the increased media coverage their struggle is now receiving.

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Truck Watch Finds Hot Spots in Unlikely Places

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2015-2016
Photos & story by Martha Kaempffer & Bonnie Urfer 

We set off on a Truck Watch trip on October 26. The goal was to uncover radioactive trucks on the highways, at truck stops, or entering or leaving a dump facility. The journey was reminiscent of the work done by Sam Day and so many others when we monitored nuclear traffic at Oak Ridge, Tennessee for the first time, decades ago. We didn’t know what we were doing and it took years to perfect our technique and build a network. Eventually, activists did an amazing job of informing the public about nuclear weapons transports or “H-bomb trucks” on the roads. Our recent journey was just the first of many Truck Watches to come and we have a lot to learn.

Our first destination was the Waste Control Specialists (WCS) dump near Andrews, in West Texas, which is located adjacent to the URENCO uranium enrichment factory on Texas County Highway 87. WCS takes low-level radioactive waste from the government and other rad-waste producers around the country. We checked truck stops where we walked up and down rows of semis, walking our dog Camper and holding the radiation detector close to trailers. We found nothing out of the ordinary. We did not come across a truck leaking radiation on this trip, but our Radalert did alert us to plenty of radioactive places.

In northwest Wisconsin, home to Nukewatch, ambient radiation averages around 10 counts per minute (cpm). Readings at WCS averaged in the low 20s. Road construction at the entrance of WCS prevented us from parking and closely monitoring traffic entering and leaving the site. We sat in a safe area about a mile down the road from the site but unfortunately missed a load that made the Radalert jump. After a day of monitoring and surveying we moved on and headed toward Carlsbad, New Mexico, home to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), where the Energy Department is burying high-level military waste deep underground.

We traveled west and came across a road going south to WIPP, but, oddly, we didn’t see the road sign declaring: “Restricted.” That is where we got the photo (below) of waste canisters accumulating in a parking lot. WIPP was closed in February 2014 due to an explosion of a 55-gallon drum in one of its underground chambers and the consequent contamination of workers there. Passing through the town of Carlsbad, the Radalert radiation monitor jumped to 40 cpm, but we did not see a truck or find the source of the radiation.

We then visited Los Alamos, New Mexico, which calls itself The Atomic City and is the site of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) that designs hydrogen bombs. Following is Martha’s impression of seeing it for the first time:

This eerie place used to be a “closed city”—off limits to anyone who did not work on weapon design and manufacturing there. Now it’s a tourist destination with a visitor’s center full of wartime sloganeering like “Talk Means Trouble: Don’t Talk” and “Silence So They Survive,” and a selection of Atomic City T-shirts showcasing H-bomb “art” like a massive mushroom cloud over the declaration,“It’s a blast!” Nearby there’s a large advertisement for the exciting new Manhattan Project National Historic Park that opened a week after we were there. We drove through the city and passed the public transportation hub which is called “Atomic City Transit,” the local gym, “Fusion Multisport,” and streets with names like Gamma Ray, Nuclear Street, Mercury Road, Eniwetok Drive and Bikini Atoll Road. In a tourist shop we found shot glasses printed with outlines of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” (the nicknames of the given the bombs we dropped in Japan), more T-shirts, and even Atomic City Salsa. 

Having not been alive in the mid-’80s when protests and actions at the Nevada Test Site and Oak Ridge, Tenn. took place regularly, this was my first time entering such a place and I can say that my jaw was hanging open the entire way through Los Alamos. The glorification of the bomb was undeniable and sickening. I felt as if I were in some other worldly place where everyone was brainwashed and I was the “conscious” spy. I was nauseated over the veneration of these weapons used to kill and maim hundreds of thousands of innocent mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters. I just wanted to shout out loud in the middle of the visitor’s center, “Do you know what these bombs did? What they could do at any moment? These ‘casualties’ are real human beings that matter.” Somehow I managed to refrain due to the creepy accepting nature of the locals. 

We passed through a check-point (frankly I’m amazed that Bonnie managed to pass inspection) and drove through the entire LANL weapons facility checking things out and getting readings (in the low-20s throughout the complex) and photographs. Although we noticed very little truck traffic, we did find a few excellent places for monitoring trucks and plan to return. 

The following day, we took some back roads through Church Rock, New Mexico, the site of the massive 1979 uranium mine waste spill in which over 1,100 tons of solid radioactive mill waste and 93 million gallons of acidic, radioactively contaminated liquid flowed into the Puerco River and traveled 80 miles downstream through Navajo lands. The wall of water reportedly overwhelmed sewers and lifted manhole covers 20 miles down river in Gallop.Days passed before residents and river-goers were notified of the spill, allowing plenty of time for children to swim in and livestock to drink the water which was contaminated to 7,000 times that of “safe” water.

We were able to drive right alongside the now dried up riverbed and see old tailings piles and abandoned United Nuclear buildings. We may have done a bit of slight trespassing in order to get readings from down in the riverbed. Once down there the highest reading was 34 cpm. Other than a large jackrabbit we did not see any other notable traffic and moved on to the Nevada Test Site.

As the road narrowed to just single lanes near Creech Air Force Base and the Test Site, we had our Radalert out and checked trucks coming in the opposite direction and as we passed them. Just a week and a half prior to our being there, a massive explosion had taken place at Beatty near the Test Site and they had closed down 140 miles of Highway 95, the road we were on, as a result. (See cover.) We wanted to get readings along the way to see how much had been contaminated. They were fairly consistent in the low 20s. Although we witnessed a drone landing at Creech AFB and happened along some wild desert horses while parked along the side of the road monitoring trucks, we found nothing more.

Transport canisters of highly radioactive wastes are backing up at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, after a burst container poisoned workers and spread plutonium and americium through the underground chambers and into the atmosphere outside. Nukewatch photo.

After Nevada, we headed back toward home up through Utah and Colorado. While driving east through Colorado on I-70, we passed through a tiny near-ghost-town called Silver Plume. Suddenly we had a reading of 60 cpm. This reading was shocking because only gamma radiation is the sort that can pass through the body of the car, and gamma radiation should not be coming off silver mine waste.

We looked all around us and found no suspicious vehicles so we pressed on and, as we were driving on a mountain road with small towns, we didn’t stop to investigate the area. That night we made it to Boulder, and at a dog park there with Camper, we sat and researched the histories of Silver Plume and Georgetown. We didn’t find records of anything but gold and silver ever being mined there.

Even inside our car—as well on the top of a pile of silver mine waste in the near ghost-town of Silver Plume, Colorado (pictured)—our Radalert reported relatively high counts-per-minute.

The next day we returned to Silver Plume for more readings. Radiation levels were fairly high along the way—in the 30s and 40s—but we couldn’t find any specific sources. A quick stop at the village welcome center in Georgetown pointed us to a hiking trail—the “7:30 Trail”—which used to be an old silver mine track. We were told that tailings piles were all along the road. We parked on the gravel Main Street in Silver Plume and followed the directions up the mountain. Before we even got to the trailhead, we found a few piles next to each other equaling one massive tailings pile. Walking up the mountain our cpm readings jumped from the high 40s and 50s, to 62 cpm on top of the tailings pile. Bonnie called the local newspaper and chatted with a reporter. Martha—hearing voices coming up the trail we had just climbed— asked the hikers if they had any information on what was being mined and whether they had been told that the area was so “hot.” They in turn asked if high radiation levels were a bad thing! They continued up the 7:30 Trail, a walk that would take them past numerous tailings piles.

In the town of Silver Plume, Colo. ambient counts-per-minute on our Radalert monitor are five times the average at the Nukewatch office in Wisconsin.

After taking pictures and Radalert readings we went back to the car and passed a sheriff parked in town and asked if he had a moment to talk. We told him about our findings. His friendly response was essentially that he “wasn’t surprised.” He pointed us toward the county Health Department one town over. We stopped there too but the woman in charge was out so we were given her business card and sent on our way. Having gathered some alarming information, contacted the media and the local police, we decided to continue home.

Our return journey was uneventful although we did pass a few Minuteman III missile silos in Wyoming and stopped to take pictures. The missile silos are still quite unnerving due to the barrenness of the landscape, the scant number of other people around, and the presence of all of the security cameras.

More Truck Watches Needed 

Lively discussions about our trip take place frequently in the Nukewatch office. We want to continue our investigation and expand the Truck Watch. To make it better, we need to raise money. Please consider donating to our Truck Watch Campaign to support more research and future trips. We also need volunteers to investigate with us. We need further investigation of the gamma source radiation at Silver Plume. We need equipment upgrades. Radioactive waste trucks move from facility to factory, on trains and trucks—it’s a business to be concerned about. It’s a business that affects everyone. We have so much more to do.

 Radioactive Waste Transport Notes
  • On Sept. 29, the congressional representative whose district includes Andrews, Texas—Republican Mike Conaway—filed legislation called the Interim Consolidated Storage Act of 2015, which would change the current Nuclear Waste Policy Act to allow the US Department of Energy to take ownership of spent nuclear fuel and contract with private companies—like Andrews-based Waste Control Specialists (WCS)—to store it. The bill is currently under committee review. Approval for spent fuel storage by WCS or its New Mexican rival proposed by Holtec would cause large amounts of high-level spent fuel to be transported from all across the country to a centralized site.
  • In addition to the low-level waste traveling on our highways and railways daily, more than 3,000 used nuclear fuel shipments have been made covering a total distance of over 1.5 million miles in the past 40 years, according to a 2009 report by the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Association.
  • Concerned about a 20-ton spent fuel rod shipment possibly headed from Virginia to Tennessee, three nuclear watchdog groups—Savannah River Site Watch (SC), Snake River Alliance Education Fund (ID), and the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance (TN)—filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in November. The groups are asking for more information about the timing and specific route the fuel rods will take as they travel across the country.
  • Correction: In the cover article of the Fall 2015 Quarterly (“Nukewatch Plans Truck Watch…”), we referred to the private waste dump operated by Waste Control Specialists in Texas as “the only open storage facility in the US.” Three other low-level waste disposal sites have current licenses with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Barnwell in South Carolina, operated by EnergySolutions, which only accepts waste from Atlantic compact states; a US Ecology site in Richland, Washington accepting waste from the Rocky Mountain and Northwest compact states; and the EnergySolutions site in Clive, Utah, which accepts waste from all regions of the US.

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US Radiation Monitoring System Fails, is Turned Off

Nukewatch Quarterly Winter 2015-2016

That radical anti-nuclear rag the Wall Street Journal has revealed that nearly three-quarters of the United States’ radiation-monitoring stations have been turned off “because they don’t work.”

Operated by the US Environmental Protection Agency, 99 out of 135 monitors built to measure beta particles have failed and have been turned off, including those in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles. The EPA has blamed interference from cellphone towers and other stray electromagnetism for the failure of the monitors. The EPA said it did not know why some of the beta radiation monitors were still working, including those near Phoenix, Dallas, Pittsburgh, and Washington, DC.

The same stations have RadNet gamma-radiation monitors, that the EPA said are not hindered by the interference. Since “almost all” radioactive substances that give off beta radiation also emit gamma radiation, the EPA said it could just rely on the gamma detectors.

Quoting unnamed nuclear experts, the Journal warned that, “In instances where only a beta [radiation] emitter is present, the lack of a working monitor could leave officials unaware of potentially dangerous levels of contamination.”

Strontium-90, one of the principle and most dangerous radionuclides spewed from reactor melt-down disasters, is one of the substances that emits only beta radiation. Nevertheless, John Griggs, Director of the EPA’s National Analytical Radiation Environmental Lab, told the Journal, “Not having the beta monitor is absolutely not a concern of ours.” However a 2012 EPA report concluded that gamma monitoring could not account for strontium-90 contamination, which could “cause large-scale public health impacts.”

Critics of federal radiation-protection programs warned that being able to specifically and quickly record the dispersal of strontium-90 would influence the nature and extent of evacuation and emergency response plans.

Radioactive substances that emit gamma and beta radiation are carried long distances by the wind in cases of major nuclear disasters, as occurred at Kyshtym, Russia in 1957, Windscale, England in 1957, Three Mile Island, Penn. in 1979, Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986, and Fukushima, Japan in 2011.

Gamma ray-emitting materials are dangerous from hundreds of feet away, and gamma radiation penetrates concrete, steel, and bone. Beta particles normally move only several feet from their source but can penetrate the skin. As with alpha particles, the most dangerous exposure to beta radiation is internal, after it is inhaled or ingested in contaminated food or water.

Even in the face of the Journal’s revelation of broad failure of the monitoring system, the EPA’s director of radiation protection division said, “We can confidently say that this system is…fully operational now with the current monitors it has to detect fairly minute levels of radiation.”

A separate 2012 report by the EPA noted that 25 of its RadNet monitors were out of operation at the time of the Fukushima disaster, and were not providing any information on either gamma or beta radiation.

This 2012 admission by the EPA calls into question the oft-repeated assertion by it and other federal, state and logal officials that radiation reaching the United States from Fukushima was not a public health threat.

—JL

Source: Wall Street Journal, Oct. 19, 2015

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Japanese Baby Milk Formula Again Declared Unfit by China

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2015
By John LaForge

Chinese import authorities seized more than 881 pounds of baby milk formula that had been imported from Japan because it had been produced in areas known to be heavily contaminated with radioactive material emitted by three damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi complex. 

China’s Xinhua news agency reported that quarantine officials said no excessive radioactive material was found in the formula, but that the baby food was sent back to Japan because China retains its ban on all imports from the areas around Fukushima. 

The seizures of the baby formula, betwen July 1 and 20, came just after a Japanese delegation implored the Chinese to ease its restrictions on Japanese food imports. On June 19, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries used a meeting in Beijing to request that the import bans—which still apply to 10 Japanese prefectures—be lifted. According to the South China Morning Post, the Japanese Agricultural Ministry had stressed “the safety of Japanese food.” 

The Chinese may have scoffed at the lobbying effort since July’s seizure was the second time Japanese infant milk formula has been declared dangerous by Chinese authorities. In December 2011, traces of cesium-137 were detected in imported baby formula from the same area from the same company. Shortly thereafter, Tokyo-based Meiji Holding Company announced the recall of 400,000 cans of their baby formula as a precaution but said the levels of cesium detected were well below allowable limits. At the time, Meiji PR officials claimed, “Babies could still drink the formula every day without any effect on their health.” 

Contrary to the clearly uninformed Meiji corporate opinion, many doctors and scientists warn that even the slightest internal radioactive contamination can cause cancer. Dr. John Goffman, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, Dr. Alice Stewart, Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Dr. Jay Gould, Dr. Helen Caldicott, and others, have all promoted the precautionary principle regarding any inhalation or ingestion of radioactive materials. 

Scientific evidence indicates that the exposure to radiation suffered by fetuses, infants and children is far more serious than if the same exposure is suffered by adults. Also, the damage done to girls and women by radiation—compared to boys and men—is known to be more severe. The World Health Organization’s 2011 assessment of Fukushima notes that when children are exposed to radiation below the age of five, there is a 70 percent higher risk of cancer for girls than there is for boys.

Feeding radiation-tainted food to the most vulnerable is at best ill-advised and at worst criminal. 

Mary Olson, a senior staff researcher with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service explains, “If the alpha-emitting particles are hitting tissue from inside the body, estimates indicate that internal alpha particle damage is anywhere from seven to 1000 times more damaging to cell structures than is X-ray [external] exposure. Another way of saying this is that when there is no distance from the source of the alpha or beta particle to its target, the doses to the target are very much higher.” When it comes to babies ingesting contaminated baby formula, no level is actually safe and this is known throughout scientific circles. 

The principle radioactive poison that is being tested for in Japanese foods is cesium-137. Unfortunately, there are also other deadly poisons that have been spewed in lesser amounts by the Fukushima disaster. These include americium-241, plutonium-236, uranium-238, thorium-232 and the extremely dangerous isotope, strontium-90. All of these contaminants may also be found in food from Japan, including in baby formula. 

In July 2011, Tokyo officials discovered cesium-137 at levels 6.4 times the national limit in beef sold to restaurants and stores in at least five prefectures; in April 2011, radioactive iodine-131 was found in breast milk of mothers east of Tokyo; radioactive tea from Japan was seized in France in July 2011 when it was found with twice the permitted amount of cesium—not that even a trace can be called harmless. The tea had come from Shizuoka Prefecture, 300 miles south of Fukushima.

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Fukushima: Thousands Have Died, Thousands More Will Die

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2015
By Dr. Ian Fairlie, The Ecologist 

Note: New evidence from Fukushima shows that as many as 2,000 people have died from necessary evacuations, while another 5,000 will die from cancer. Future assessments of fatalities from nuclear disasters must include deaths from displacement-induced ill-heath and suicide, in addition to those from direct radiation impacts.1

Official data from Fukushima show that nearly 2,000 people died from the effects of evacuations necessary to avoid high radiation exposures from the disaster.

The uprooting to unfamiliar areas, cutting of family ties, loss of social support networks, disruption, exhaustion, poor physical conditions and disorientation can and do result in many people, in particular older people, dying.

Increased suicide has occurred among younger and older people following the Fukushima evacuations, but the trends are unclear.

A Japanese Cabinet Office report stated that, between March 2011 and July 2014, 56 suicides in Fukushima Prefecture were linked to the nuclear accident. This figure should be taken as a minimum, rather than a maximum.

Mental health consequences 

It is necessary to include the mental health consequences of radiation exposures and evacuations. For example, Becky Martin has stated her PhD research at Southampton University in the UK shows that “the most significant impacts of radiation emergencies are often in our minds.”

She adds, “Imagine that you’ve been informed that your land, your water, the air that you have breathed may have been polluted by a deadly and invisible contaminant. Something with the capacity to take away your fertility, or affect your unborn children.

“Even the most resilient of us would be concerned … many thousands of radiation emergency survivors have subsequently gone on to develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression, and anxiety disorders as a result of their experiences and the uncertainty surrounding their health.”

It is likely that these fears, anxieties, and stresses will act to magnify the effects of evacuations, resulting in even more old people dying or people committing suicide.

Such considerations should not be taken as arguments against evacuations, however. They are an important, life-saving strategy. But, as Becky Martin argues, “We need to provide greatly improved social support following resettlement and extensive long-term psychological care to all radiation emergency survivors, to improve their health outcomes and preserve their futures.”

Untoward pregnancy outcomes 

Dr. Alfred Körblein from Nuremberg, Germany, recently noticed and reported on a 15 percent drop (highly statistically significant) in the numbers of live births in Fukushima Prefecture in December 2011, nine months after the accident.

This might point to higher rates of early spontaneous abortions. He also observed a (statistically significant) 20 percent increase in the infant mortality rate in 2012, relative to the long-term trend in Fukushima Prefecture—plus six surrounding prefectures—which he attributes to the consumption of radioactive food:

“The fact that infant mortality peaks in May 2012, more than one year after the Fukushima accident, suggests that the increase is an effect of internal rather than external radiation exposure. 

“In Germany [after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster] perinatal mortality peaks followed peaks of cesium burden in pregnant women with a time-lag of seven months. May 2012 minus seven months is October 2011, the end of the harvesting season. Thus, consumption of contaminated foodstuff during autumn 2011 could be an explanation for the excess of infant mortality in the Fukushima region in 2012.” 

These are indicative rather than definitive findings and need to be verified by further studies. Unfortunately, such studies are notable by their absence.

Cancer and other late effects from radioactive fallout 

Finally, we have to consider the longer term health effects of the radiation exposures from the radioactive fallouts after the four explosions and three meltdowns at Fukushima in March 2011. Large differences of view exist on this issue in Japan. These make it difficult for lay people and journalists to understand what the real situation is.

The Japanese government, its advisors, and most radiation scientists in Japan (with some honourable exceptions) minimise the risks of radiation. The official widely-observed policy is that small amounts of radiation are harmless: scientifically speaking this is untenable.

For example, the Japanese government is attempting to increase the public limit for radiation in Japan from 1 mSv* to 20 mSv per year. Its scientists are trying to force the International Commission on Radiological Protection to accept this large increase. This is not only unscientific, it is also unconscionable.

Part of the reason for this policy is that radiation scientists in Japan (in the US, as well) appear unable or unwilling to accept the stochastic nature of low-level radiation effects. “Stochastic” means an all-or-nothing response: you either get cancer, etc., or you don’t.

As the dose decreases, the effects become less likely: the chance of cancer declines all the way down to zero dose. The corollary is that tiny doses, even well below background, still carry a small chance of cancer: there is never a safe dose.

But, as observed by Spycher et al. (2015), some scientists “a priori exclude the possibility that low dose radiation could increase the risk of cancer. They will therefore not accept studies that challenge their foregone conclusion.”

One reason some scientists refuse to accept radiation’s stochastic effects (cancers, strokes, cardiovascular system diseases, hereditary effects, etc.) is that they only appear after long latency periods—often decades, for solid cancers. For the Japanese government and its radiation advisors, it seems out-of-sight means out-of-mind.

The Japanese government may be able to ignore late radiogenic effects, but the evidence for them is absolutely rock solid. Ironically, it comes primarily from the world’s largest ongoing epidemiology study, the “Life Span Study” of Japanese atomic bomb survivors by the Radiation Effects Research Foundation which is based in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The lessons of Chernobyl 

The mass of epidemiological evidence from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 clearly indicates that cancer etc increases will very likely also occur at Fukushima, but many Japanese (and US) scientists deny this evidence.

For example, much debate currently exists over the existence and interpretation of increased thyroid cancers, cysts, and nodules in Fukushima Prefecture resulting from the disaster. From the findings after Chernobyl, thyroid cancers are expected to start increasing 4 to 5 years after 2011.

It’s best to withhold comment until clearer results become available in 2016, but early indications are not reassuring for the Japanese government. After then, other solid cancers are expected to increase as well, but it will take a while for these to become manifest.

The best way of forecasting the numbers of late effects (as in cancers, etc.) is by estimating the collective dose to Japan from the Fukushima fall out. We do this by envisaging that everyone in Japan exposed to the radioactive fallout from Fukushima has thereby received lottery tickets: but they are negative tickets. That is, if your lottery number comes up, you get cancer.2

If you live far away from the Fukushima Daiichi site, you get few tickets and the chance is low: if you live close, you get more tickets and the chance is higher. You can’t tell who will be unlucky, but you can estimate the total number by using collective doses.

The 2013 UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) Report has estimated that the collective dose to the Japanese population from Fukushima is 48,000 person Sv. This is a very large dose; see below.

Unfortunately, pro-nuclear Japanese scientists also criticise the concept of collective dose as it relies on the stochastic nature of radiation’s effects and on the Linear No Threshold (LNT) model of radiation’s effects which they also refute. But almost all official regulatory bodies throughout the world recognise the stochastic nature of radiation’s effects, the LNT, and collective doses.

Summing up Fukushima 

About 60 people died immediately during the actual evacuations in Fukushima Prefecture in March 2011. Between 2011 and 2015, an additional 1,867 people3 in the Prefecture died as a result of the evacuations following the nuclear disaster.4 These deaths were from ill health and suicides.

From the UNSCEAR estimate of 48,000 person Sv, it can be reliably estimated (using a fatal cancer risk factor of 10 percent per Sv) that about 5,000 fatal cancers will occur in Japan in the future from Fukushima’s fallout. This estimate from official data agrees with my own personal estimate using a different methodology.

In sum, the health toll from the Fukushima nuclear disaster is horrendous. At the minimum:

  • Over 160,000 people were evacuated, most of them permanently.
  • Many cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety disorders arising from the evacuations.
  • About 12,000 workers exposed to high levels of radiation, some up to 250 mSv.
  • An estimated 5,000 fatal cancers from radiation exposures in the future.
  • Plus similar (unquantified) numbers of radiogenic strokes, CVS diseases and hereditary diseases.
  • Between 2011 and 2015, about 2,000 deaths from radiation-related evacuations due to ill-health and suicides.
  • An as yet unquantified number of thyroid cancers.
  • An increased infant mortality rate in 2012 and a decreased number of live births in December 2011.

Among the notable environmental effects are that eight percent of Japan’s landmass (30,000 km2), including parts of Tokyo, have been contaminated by radioactivity; overall economic losses have been estimated between $300 and $500 billion.

Catastrophes that must never be repeated 

The Fukushima accident is still not over and its ill-effects will linger for a long time into the future. However we can say now that the nuclear disaster at Fukushima delivered a huge blow to Japan and its people.

Two thousand Japanese people have already died from the evacuations and another 5,000 are expected to die from future cancers.

It is impossible not to be moved by the scale of Fukushima’s toll in terms of deaths, suicides, mental ill-health and human suffering. Fukushima’s effect on Japan is similar to Chernobyl’s massive blow against the former Soviet Union in 1986.

Indeed, several writers have expressed the view that the Chernobyl nuclear disaster was a major factor in the subsequent collapse of the USSR during 1989-1990.

It is notable that Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the USSR at the time of Chernobyl and Naoto Kan, Prime Minister of Japan at the time of Fukushima have both expressed their opposition to nuclear power. Indeed Kan has called for all nuclear power to be abolished.

—Dr. Ian Fairlie was head of the Secretariat to the UK government’s Committee on internal radiation risks. 

1 The article appeared in The Ecologist, Aug. 17, 2015: theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2984986/fukushima_thousands_have_died_thousands_more_will_die.html.
2 Credit to Jan Beyea in the US for the negative lottery idea.
3 Correct as of March 2015.
4 In addition, 1,603 people were killed directly by the earthquake and tsunami in Fukushima Prefecture, and approximately 1,350 tsunami evacuee deaths occurred in Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures. In the latter cases, the evacuations were not radiation-related.
*A milliSievert (mSv) is one thousandth of a Sievert (1,000 mSv = 1 Sv). A Sievert (Sv) is a measure of the health effect of low levels of external ionizing radiation on the human body.

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