=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #227
—April 3, 1991—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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THE MILITARY TOXICS SCANDAL DEEPENS.
The nation’s military toxics scandal deepened last week with two
new revelations: (1) the Department of Defense sent a report to
Congress announcing it has discovered 3081 additional chemically
contaminated sites besides the 14,401 they had reported earlier;
this increases the officially-reported number of poisoned
military sites by 21%. (WASHINGTON POST 3/29/91, pg. A4.)
Secondly, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed
this week that the engineers who built nuclear weapons at the
Hanford, Washington, reservation in the 1950s dumped 127 millions
gallons of highly radioactive waste into the ground just a few
miles from the Columbia, the nation’s 4th largest river. (NEW
YORK TIMES 3/28/91, pgs. 1, B6.) The TIMES reported that “Dirt
from the reservation may be as dangerous as highly radioactive
wastes stored in special tanks. But the federal government is
still struggling to measure the level of contamination and has
little idea of how to contain the danger. Wind, rain, birds,
animals, and underground water flow can all spread the
radioactivity to the Columbia River, which forms one border of
the reservation, and even further afield.”
3081 More Military Points of Blight
Summarizing the Defense Department’s own report to Congress on
the 3081 new contaminated military sites, the WASHINGTON POST
said, “According to the report, some of the nation’s worst toxic
waste problems occur at military bases, where the testing,
manufacture, and maintenance of weapons resulted in pollution of
the local environment. Poisonous substances dumped on land have
penetrated deep into underground currents of water, threatening
nearby streams or drinking water wells.” The report lists 1855
individual military bases (17% over last year’s 1579) and
installations as having contaminated sites; many installations
have several contaminated sites.
Radioactive Wastes Bulldozed into Trenches
The radioactive wastes newly discovered in the soils at Hanford
contain two long-lived elements: Technetium-99, with a half-life
of 212,000 years and iodine-129, with a half-life of 16 million
years. The half-life of a radioactive element is the time it
takes for half of it to change into a less harmful substance via
natural radioactive decay. At the end of 10 halflives, only a
small proportion (1/1024, or 0.09%) of the original material
remains. For this reason, scientists say 10 half-lives is the
duration of the hazard for any radioactive element. Thus, the
soil at Hanford will remain radioactive with technetium-99 for
2.1 million years and with iodine-129 for 160 million years. Homo
sapiens (modern humans) have inhabited the earth for less than 1
million years.
Radioactive iodine is a particular hazard to humans because
iodine is an essential element that we all need in our diet to
avoid thyroid-deficiency disease. Therefore, the human body
selectively extracts iodine from food, water and air, storing it
mainly in the thyroid gland. Radioactive and nonradioactive
iodine are identical from a chemical viewpoint, so humans (and
other living things, for that matter) are unable to differentiate
one from the other, storing both kinds in the thyroid.
Radioactive iodine causes fatal thyroid cancer.
Until now, nuclear engineers and scientists have said that the
main engineering challenge they face is to figure out some place
to stash these wastes for millions of years in a way that
guarantees that future generations will not be harmed by our
blunders. This week’s revelations at Hanford made the problem
seem even more difficult: Randall F. Smith in the DOE’s regional
office in Seattle said, “the technology may not exist to recover
some of the wastes dumped in the dirt” at Hanford. The
implications of these words are ominous; if Mr. Smith is right,
the U.S. military has already set in motion the unavoidable
radioactive contamination of one of the nation’s major rivers.
The TIMES put this new revelation into context as follows:
“Hanford was already known to be one of the most polluted
radioactive dumping grounds in the world…. More than five years
after the complex began to open itself to outside scrutiny, such
skeletons continue to come to light.”
Critics point out that the nation’s nuclear scientists today are
continuing to create new “skeletons”-more of the same radioactive
materials–still without any idea where to put them for safety.
Most of the wastes are temporarily stored in tanks near where
they are made. However, the federal Department of Energy “is
still discharging chemical and radioactive wastes into the soil
[at Hanford] in 27 individual streams, even as engineers try to
find ways to clean up past releases,” the TIMES reported last
week.
Technetium-99 and iodine-129 are not the only radioactive
elements dumped into the ground at Hanford. The wastes also
contained strontium-90 at concentrations “thousands or tens of
thousands of times higher than allowable limits for public
access,” according to reports written by General Electric at the
time the dumping occurred in the 1950s. Strontium-90 is much more
radioactive than technetium-99 or iodine-129, and therefore is
more hazardous but also more short-lived, with a half-life of 28
years (meaning it will be gone in “only” about 300 years).
Strontium-90 mimics calcium in the environment, entering food
chains (including cows’ milk) and ending up in human bones and
teeth where it is a potent carcinogen.
At the time this massive dumping occurred, General Electric was
running the Hanford reservation under contract to the old Atomic
Energy Commission (AEC), which has since become the Department of
Energy. It is not clear why government authorities have not tried
to force General Electric to pay for the cleanup, rather than
taxpayers. Cynics speculate that one reason may be General
Electric’s ownership of NBC television. Good TV coverage is
essential to a successful campaign bid by any national political
candidate, even a popular incumbent.
In addition to strontium, the dumping included unspecified
quantities of plutonium-239, which has a half-life of 24,400
years; plutonium is among the two or three most potent
carcinogens ever discovered.
According to the TIMES, the wastes began moving through the
environment almost immediately after they were dumped into
trenches. Secret reports unclassified two years ago, said that as
early as May, 1958, workers found radioactive rabbit and coyote
dung scattered over a 2000-acre area.
The TIMES reported July 31, 1990 (pgs. A1, A16), that 177 tanks
on the Hanford reservation holding millions of gallons of
radioactivity were in danger of exploding. The TIMES said then,
“after years of secrecy and sometimes outright falsehoods in
public statements, the Department of Energy has recently”
acknowledged the danger of explosions.
To take action against military toxics, get: DEALING WITH
MILITARY TOXICS; WHAT YOU CAN DO (Falls Church, VA: Citizen’s
Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste [CCHW; P.O. Box 8606, Falls
Church, VA 22040; (703) 237-2249], 1987. $8.50.
The address for the Radioactive Waste Campaign (whose excellent
1988 report, DEADLY DEFENSE; MILITARY RADIOACTIVE LANDFILLS, we
reviewed in RHWN #124, has changed; it’s now 7 West St., Warwick,
NY 10990-1447; (914) 986-1116.
The National Toxic Campaign Fund’s Military Toxics Network,
publishers of The U.S. MILITARY’S TOXIC LEGACY (see RHWN #224,
#225) has a new address: 100 South King St., Suite 410, Seattle,
WA 98104; (206) 467-9558. The Network has released a new analysis
of the latest DOD report, plus a press release, dated March 28,
1991.
Get: THE DEFENSE ENVIRONMENTAL RESTORATION PROGRAM ANNUAL REPORT
TO CONGRESS FOR FY 1990. [Document number ADA 231362.]
(Springfield, VA: National Technical Information Service, Feb.,
1991.) $31.00. Phone (703) 487-4600. NTIS says it will be a month
before they have copies to distribute; they say the Defense
Department hasn’t yet sent them an original copy they can
reproduce. Direct your complaints to: Kevin Doxey, Director of
the Defense Environment Restoration Program: (703) 3252211. It
was Mr. Doxey’s office that issued the new report but hasn’t
gotten it to NTIS yet.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: military toxics; dod; nuclear weapons;
hazardous waste; radioactive waste; groundwater; drinking water;
hanford, wa; iodine; thyroid cancer; carcinogens; iodine-129;
strontium-90; technetium-99; plutonium-239; rtk;