Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 43, No. 18, Ed. 1 Friday, January 7, 2000 Page: 2 of 12
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: Hudspeth County Area Newspaper Collection and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the UNT Libraries.
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PAGE 2, HUDSPETH COUNTY HERALD-Dell Valley Review, JANUARY 7,2000
December 24,1999
Paducah uranium plant tracked cases of employees
with cancer
PADUCAH, Ky. (AP) -- Officials at a federal uranium
processing plant covertly tracked suspicious cases of cancer
among employees while claiming the workers were safe, according
to published reports.
In the early 1980s, managers at the Energy
Department's Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in western
Kentucky counted 13 current and former workers who suffered from
leukemia and other cancers in the previous 27 years.
Some names and initials were listed on a confidential
DOE document, The Courier Journal of Louisville reported today. All
but three had died by 1984, but medical experts apparently didn't
learn of the list for nearly a decade. Others never did.
"Workers should have been told the list was being kept
and why they were being tracked," said Jim Key, a representative for
the workers' union. "I was astounded they had been tracking this
and never told us."
The Washington Post reported today that its analysis of
plant rosters listing more than 200 employees found that 10 died of
blood and lymph system cancers, including six from leukemia.
Government mortality rates show that only a single death would be
expected in a group of adults that size.
Three plant employees have filed a federal lawsuit
alleging workers unwittingly were exposed to plutonium and other
highly toxic substances from 1953 to 1976. The suit is sealed.
A recent DOE investigation looking back to 1990 found
that worker safety and environmental problems have persisted
during federal efforts to clean up the plant.
That report, released in October, said plant workers had
not been adequately informed of some risks and that radioactive
contamination from the site continues to spread through
groundwater toward the Ohio River.
Energy Secretary Bill Richardson has apologized for the
failure to disclose plant hazards and promised compensation for
sick workers. Congress has provided a $16 million increase for the
plant's cleanup in its fiscal 2000 budget.
At the time the cancer list was put together, in 1984, the
federal government and plant officials reportedly were hiding the fact
that highly radioactive metals such as plutonium and neptunium had
contaminated some of the uranium processed at the plant.
Government medical researchers saw the list when they
visited the plant in 1992 and urged the Energy Department to study
the incidence of leukemia among workers -- something that was
never done, the Courier Journal reported.
It is not known why the plant operator - either Union
Carbide or Martin Marietta, which took over operations in 1984 —
kept the list. The names of two of the plant's former health
physicists, Charles Turok and Bruce McDougal, are on the
document, indicating each received a copy. Both said they hadn't
seen it.
Steven Wyatt, a spokesman for the Energy
Department's office in Oak Ridge, Tenn., said he showed copies of
the list to department officials in Paducah and Oak Ridge, and "no
one has a clue as to who kept it or why."
Most of the dead employees worked in the uranium-
processing building, in maintenance or in laboratories that could
have exposed them to radiation. The other three employees were
identified only by initials.
Medical experts say the incidence of 13 cancer cases
among the more than 5,000 people who worked at the plant since its
1953 opening may not be excessive. But the number does not
include those who died of lung cancer or other radiation-linked
cancers.
Other documents show the Energy Department has
been collecting its own data on worker deaths at its nuclear plants.
By the early 1990s, it had collected 700 death certificates of former
Paducah workers and hundreds more of dead workers at other
nuclear facilities.
Pesticides’ effects hidden by direction
Marty pesticide molecules are chiral, which means
they're shaped in left- and right-handed patterns.
Though the same chemically, the orientation deter-
mines if a molecule is an effective pesticide. Nature
reported. Both types of molecules may be in a pesti-
cide since it’s very difficult to separate the two
shapes. But those redundant molecules may pose a
hidden threat because toxicity tests look at only
one molecule direction and not the other.
Santa’s nuclear waste grotto
BBC News - Scotland Wednesday, 29 December, 1999
The containers came from the nuclear base at Dounreay
A Santa’s grotto used by hundreds of children in the run up to
Christmas was made of containers used to store nuclear waste, it has
been revealed.
The grotto, in Thurso, Caithness, was built by apprentices from the
nearby Dounreay nuclear plant using four containers which had
stored low-level waste.
A leading anti-nuclear campaigner is now calling for a full inquiry.
Lorraine Mann, of Scotland Against Nuclear Dumping, said she was
horrified to learn that the grotto had been visited by hundreds of
children.
The UK Atomic Energy Authority, which runs the plant, defended the
use of the material and said it had been thoroughly decontaminated.
LOW-LEVEL WASTE
The containers, each of which weighs three-and-a-half tonnes, had
been welded toget her and had had doors and windows cut in them to
make a grotto for youngsters in the town.
[I] I can categorically state that those containers were sate [I]
Lynne Straples-Scott, Dounreay
Radioactive particles have
been found on beaches
around the plant, which is due
to close in 2004.
Its closure was orderd by then
Scottish Secretary Donald
Dewar after nuclear
inspectors and environmental
watchdogs condemned the
plant’s record and found 143
specific safety lapses at the
site.
December 21,1999
Air Force to
decide whether
to increase
training flights
By Greg Harman
Odessa American
The Air Force is expected to
decide next month whether it
will expand low-altitude
bomber training flights over
West Texas and New Mexico.
But it has emerged that before they left the plant they had been used
to store low-level nuclear waste, including overalls and paper towels
used by workers in contact with radioactive materials.
Dounreay spokeswoman Lynne Straples-Scott said: "I can
categorically state that those containers were safe.
“They were thoroughly clean, and they would not have been allowed to
leave the site if there had been any danger.”
The grotto had been built for community group Thurso Beyond 2000.
[I] Dounreay said there had been no complaints.
Nobody from the group has been available for comment.,
Ms Straples-Scott said there had been no complaints from the group,
which was aware of what the containers had been used for at the
plant.
About 1,500 children are thought to have made a visit to the building,
which had taken a month for a team of apprentices to complete.
Dounreay, which was built as a power station on Scotland’s far
northern coast, has suffered a series of safety lapses in recent
years.
The proposed Realistic
Bomber Training Initiative
(RBTI) would bring B-1B
Lancer and B-52
Stratofortress bombers from
Abilene and Barksdale, La., to
train at very low altitudes over
much of the Big Bend region.
U. S. Rep Henry Bonilla, R-
San Antonio, urged that
proposed flights over his
district be scrapped.
“There should be no increase
in low-level bomber training
over West Texas," Bonilla told
General Michael E., Ryan, Air
Force Chief of Staff, in a letter
dated Dec. 17.
While such flights already
occur over some areas, the
Air Force’s proposal may
expand military airspace over
the region and increase the
PAGE 11
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Lynch, Mary Louise. Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 43, No. 18, Ed. 1 Friday, January 7, 2000, newspaper, January 7, 2000; Dell City, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1178963/m1/2/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .