'Safe' uranium that left a town contaminated
http://www.guardian.co.uk/nuclear/article/0,,2212931,00.html
They were told depleted uranium was not hazardous. Now, 23 years
after a US
arms plant closed, workers and residents have cancer - and experts say
their suffering shows the use of such weapons may be a war crime
David Rose in Colonie, New York
Sunday November 18, 2007
The Observer
It is 50 years since Tony Ciarfello and his friends used the yard of a
depleted uranium weapons factory as their playground in Colonie, a
suburb
of Albany in upstate New York state. 'There wasn't no fence at the
back of
the plant,' remembers Ciarfello. 'Inside was a big open ground and
nobody
would chase us away. We used to play baseball and hang by the stream
running through it. We even used to fish in it - though we noticed
the fish
had big pink lumps on them.'
Today there are lumps on Ciarfello's chest - strange, round tumours that
protrude about an inch. 'No one seems to know what they are,' he says.
'I've also had a brain aneurysm caused by a suspected tumour. I'm
constantly fatigued and for years I've had terrible pains, deep
inside my
leg bones. I fall over without warning and I've got a heart condition.'
Ciarfello's illnesses have rendered him unable to work for years.
Aged 57
and a father of five, he looks much older.
The US federal government and the firm that ran the factory, National
Lead
(NL) Industries, have been assuring former workers and residents
around the
18-acre site for decades that, although it is true that the plant
used to
produce unacceptable levels of radioactive pollution, it was not a
serious
health hazard.
Now, in a development with potentially devastating implications not only
for Colonie but also for the future use of some of the West's most
powerful
weapon systems, that claim is being challenged. In a paper to be
published
in the next issue of the scientific journal Science of the Total
Environment, a team led by Professor Randall Parrish of Leicester
University reports the results of a three-year study of Colonie,
funded by
Britain's Ministry of Defence.
Parrish's team has found that DU contamination, which remains
radioactive
for millions of years, is in effect impossible to eradicate, not only
from
the environment but also from the bodies of humans. Twenty-three years
after production ceased they tested the urine of five former workers.
All
are still contaminated with DU. So were 20 per cent of people tested who
had spent at least 10 years living near the factory when it was still
working, including Ciarfello.
The small sample size precludes the drawing of statistical
conclusions, the
journal paper says. But to find DU at all after so long a period is
'significant, since no previous study has documented evidence of DU
exposure more than 20 years prior... [this] indicates that the body
burden
of uranium must still be significant, whether retained in lungs,
lymphatic
system, kidneys or bone'. The team is now testing more individuals.
In 1984, having bought the factory from NL for $10 in a deal that
meant the
firm was exempted from having to pay for its clean-up, the federal
government began a massive decommissioning project, supervised by the
Army
Corps of Engineers. The clean-up did not finish until summer 2007,
having
cost some $190m. Contractors demolished the buildings and removed
more than
150,000 tons of soil and other contaminated detritus, digging down to
depths of up to 40ft and trucking it 2,000 miles by rail to underground
radioactive waste sites in the Rockies. All that is now left of the NL
plant is a huge, undulating field, ringed by razor wire.
Despite this colossal effort, Parrish and his colleagues found high
concentrations of DU particles in soil, stream sediments and
household dust
in the vicinity of the site, deposited long ago when the factory
burnt the
shavings and chips produced by the weapons manufacturing process: the
study
estimates that, over the years, about 10 tons of uranium oxide dust
wafted
from the chimney into the surrounding environment.
The Army Corps clean-up team tested the soil from some of the gardens of
houses backing on to the plant, and in cases where it was found to be
emitting more than 35 pico curies of radiation per gram they removed it.
The researchers discovered dust in and around buildings emitting up
to 10
times as much. DU, inhaled in the form of tiny motes of oxide that lodge
inside the lungs, emits alpha radiation, nuclei of helium. Unlike the
gamma
radiation produced by enriched, weapons-grade uranium, alpha
particles will
not penetrate the skin.
But inside the body DU travels around the bloodstream, accumulating not
only in the lungs but also in other soft tissues such as the brain
and bone
marrow. There, each mote becomes an alpha particle hotspot,
bombarding its
locality and damaging cell DNA. Research has shown that DU has the
potential to cause a wide range of cancers, kidney and thyroid problems,
birth defects and disorders of the immune system.
When DU 'penetrators' - armour-piercing shells that form the standard
armament of some of Britain's and America's most commonly deployed
military
aircraft and vehicles - strike their targets, 10 per cent or more of the
heavy DU metal burns at high temperatures, producing oxide particles
very
similar to those at Colonie.
TV footage shot in Baghdad in 2003 shows children playing in the
remains of
tanks coated with thick, black DU oxide, while there have long been
claims
that the DU shells that destroyed Saddam Hussein's tanks in the 1991
Gulf
war were responsible for high rates of cancer in places such as Basra.
Parrish's team includes David Carpenter, an environmental health expert
from Albany University. 'DU burns, it releases particulates that can be
breathed in, and it doesn't go away,' he says. 'The issue does not
concern
military personnel as much as civilian populations in theatres where
they
are used. Now we know that we can still find measurable levels of DU
among
the people of Colonie, we need a much bigger study to establish whether
they have suffered disproportionate ill-effects such as cancers as a
consequence. If they have, it would raise a serious ethical challenge to
the use of these weapons. Arguably it could constitute a war crime.'
The NL plant on Central Avenue, Colonie's main artery, opened in 1958
and
became one of the Pentagon's main suppliers. DU - the material left
in huge
quantities by the process of refining enriched uranium for bombs and
nuclear reactors - is extremely dense. A pointed rod fired at high
velocity
will penetrate not only armour but several feet of concrete. In 1979 a
whistleblower from inside the plant told the local health department
that
it was releasing large amounts of DU from its 50ft chimney, which was
not
properly filtered. The state government carried out atmospheric tests
and
in 1981 ordered that main production cease. The factory shut three years
later.
One of those who has now tested positive is Mike Aidala, 71, who
worked at
the plant for 22 years and became its health and safety director.
'When it
started, the place was spotless,' he says. 'But over the years it got
dirtier and dirtier. We burnt the chips produced by the lathes in a
steel
furnace.' He added: 'A lot of my co-workers died young. Whether the
plant
was the reason, I guess we'll never know.'
As concern in Colonie rose, a residents' group began to call for a
publicly
funded health study. For Anne Rabe, a founder member of a campaign
that has
now lasted for 25 years, the Parrish study represents overdue
vindication.
'I do find it very ironic that the US government at state and federal
level
refused for so long to do anything, and now the UK comes along and has
funded these tests,' Rabe says.
Repeatedly, US agencies have claimed that the Colonie plant was
reasonably
safe, despite the massive clean-up. Most recently, in 2003, the federal
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry issued a report saying
that, although the pollution produced when the plant was operating might
have slightly increased the risks of kidney disease and lung cancer,
there
was now 'no apparent public health hazard'.
Rabe's campaign has conducted a health study of its own, assembling a
dossier from personal contacts and by knocking on neighbours' doors. It
found that among almost 400 people surveyed there were numerous cases of
rare cancers, thyroid and kidney complaints and birth defects.
The main difficulty the campaigners faced in the past is that DU
eventually
dissolves and is passed in the urine. The US government claimed that the
plant had been shut so long that it would be impossible to determine who
had been contaminated - so rendering a full health survey pointless.
However, Parrish has developed new, more sensitive methods. At the same
time, his impartiality is impeccable. Before his work in Colonie,
Parrish
tested more than 400 Gulf war veterans, failing to detect DU in any
of them
- so dealing a serious blow to those who claimed that DU is one of the
causes of Gulf war syndrome. 'I did not expect to find it in
Colonie,' he
says.
Some of those who have tested positive display classic, common symptoms
found in DU victims elsewhere. For example, Ciarfello says he was
still in
his twenties when his teeth 'just started to crumble: they ground
down to
nothing until they were just these little stumps and I pushed them
out with
my tongue'. Other members of his family are sick. His son developed a
severe kidney condition, while his brother, Frank, can barely walk
and also
suffers chronic fatigue. A nephew was born with a disfiguring facial
skin
tumour that has required repeated surgery.
Tom Donnelly, 56, spent 34 years as a foreman at a garage door workshop
next to the NL factory, where tests have found high concentrations of
DU in
dust samples from places such as shelves and light fittings. He has
three
auto-immune disorders: Crohn's disease, a chronic inflammation of the
bowel, total alopecia, and cerebral vasculitis, an immune system-related
narrowing of blood vessels in the brain.
'The new tests suggest I inhaled about 4,000 particles of DU,' Donnelly
says. 'I used to come to work in the morning and see the chimney blowing
its smoke in a thick black plume. Most of us had no idea that the
plant was
using uranium at all. After all, the sign outside said National Lead.
The
Army Corps removed all that soil, but they never looked at the dust
at all.
The effect on my life has been devastating, but how many others are
already
dead?' One is his late boss and friend Tom Murphy - who, like Donnelly,
developed Crohn's and died of it at 61.
Ann Carusone lived in a house behind the plant from the time of her
birth
in 1966 until 1993. 'When I tested positive, my reaction was sheer
disbelief,' she says. She has endured years of a chronic lung disease,
sarcoidosis, an inflammation of the lymph nodes usually found in much
older
people, as well as a blood disorder that produced petecchiae - dots of
blood beneath her skin, similar to those seen in some of those
exposed to
radiation at Hiroshima. In her twenties she had a pre-cancerous ovarian
cyst that when removed was the size of a grapefruit.
'I knew many people from round here who died young, in their twenties
and
thirties,' she says. 'We used to play out in the creek that flowed
out of
the plant site. The water was sluggish, a weird yellow-green colour.
We'd
splash about in it. Now we know it was laden with depleted uranium.'
'It's very striking how many people in this small group have immune
disorders like Tom Donnelly's,' says Carpenter. 'I can say with great
confidence that people who inhaled DU are at greater risk of lung
cancer,
as well as leukaemia, other cancers and genetic damage of the type that
causes birth defects. Previous responses by official bodies could be
said
to amount to a cover-up. People have been told that there's no
problem, and
that's very clearly not true.'
Yesterday NL failed to return calls requesting comment.
Deadly residue
Depleted uranium (DU) is the residue left in massive quantities when
bomb-grade uranium is refined to make reactor fuel and nuclear weapons.
The densest naturally occurring metal, it is used to make
armour-penetrating shells, standard armament for some of the West's most
widely deployed military aircraft and vehicles, such as Bradley armoured
cars, Abrams tanks, and Jaguar A10 fighter planes.
Less intensely radioactive than bomb-grade uranium, DU emits alpha
particles, known to cause cancers.
DU weapons that strike their targets produce clouds of tiny uranium
oxide
particles, which lodge in the lungs and other soft tissues such as the
brain and bone marrow.
DU shells were widely used in the 1991 Gulf war; in Bosnia and
Kosovo; and
are being used now in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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nuclear
November 2007 
Tipping Point Project
Access: Public
More than 150 people, including families, rallied at the legislature to protest a proposed nuclear reactor in northern Alberta.
The protesters want Premier Ed Stelmach to keep Alberta nuclear-free.
