WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS
In its October 25, 1999 report, Foster Wheeler states that “the exposure limit chosen was 15 mrem/year [millirems per year] above natural background, which is a value already proposed by the EPA … 15 mrem/year is generally considered to be an acceptable end point, which is considered to be protective of human health by the USEPA.” This “dose-based” number measured in millirem is not the way the EPA measures a radionuclide’s toxicity. The agency calculates the presumably safe levels of radionuclides by using “preliminary remediation goals,” or PRGs. The Foster Wheeler statement that the EPA proposed this is also apparently inaccurate.
“An EPA limit was never formally proposed and the informal suggestion was withdrawn due to, basically, Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission pressure,” says Stuart Walker, an EPA official who specializes in Superfund radiation issues. “The PRG levels are kind of the generic concentrations for Superfund cleanup sites, although when you start talking about soil, we use a risk range for cancer of one-in-1,000,000 to one-in-10,000 as the risk limit range.”
In other words, the EPA calculates a fatal cancer risk for each substance so that it would cause no more than one death per every 10,000 people exposed to that radionuclide. But the ultimate goal is no more than one death per million people exposed.
The PRG for strontium-90, and its accompanying decay product, yttrium-90, is 0.231 picocuries per gram (pCi/g). This is a measure of how much the substance decays, shooting out ions that cause cancer.
Foster Wheeler’s 58 soil samples averaged 1.39 pCi/g, or six times the EPA’s preliminary remediation goal and nearly 27 times above the typical EPA background level for Sr-90 in the area. The hottest sampling spot, and the one closest to Rocketdyne’s Santa Susana Field Laboratory, measured 12.34 pCi/g, which is over 54 times the EPA’s PRG and 237 times the normal background for the radionuclide. Regardless, the GreenPark subcontractor gave a hearty thumbs-up to the results. “In perspective, the concentrations of strontium-90 … were found to be insignificant,” concluded the Foster Wheeler report.
“That’s definitely within the risk range,” says Walker, “unless something weird is going on with the site that would kick it up but, like I said, those are conservative numbers.”
“[Foster Wheeler] found even higher rad levels in the second set of tests than the first and had to massage them through really flaky means, but the numbers don’t lie,” says longtime Rocketdyne critic Dan Hirsch of the Santa Cruz-based Committee to Bridge the Gap.
This weird science made its way into the now-approved EIR. “This assessment found that radiation levels were within normal background levels,” it reads. “Tritium and strontium-90 were not detected in any of the soil and groundwater samples at levels above normal background levels or at levels considered to pose a health risk.”
“It is troubling that a project would be approved based on the assertion that no soil samples found strontium-90 … at any level deemed to be a health concern, when virtually all of the several dozen samples exceeded background and EPA’s preliminary remediation goals for radioactive contamination,” says Hirsch.
The Leukemia Connection
“Increased strontium-90 contamination could only be related to nuclear fission of uranium, therefore, it’s most likely related to the Santa Susana nuclear reactor facilities,” says Dr. Robert Dodge, a Ventura-based family doctor who is also the president of the county’s chapter of the public health organization Physicians for Social Responsibility(PSR). “I think this should be an issue of concern not only to individuals in the vicinity of the proposed development, but also to anyone downwind of any construction proposal.”
Founded in 1961, PSR gained notoriety by documenting the presence of Sr-90 in children’s teeth across the U.S. This finding helped lead to the Limited Nuclear Test Ban treaty signed by President John F. Kennedy, which ended above-ground nuclear testing by the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. At the signing, Kennedy acknowledged radiation’s connection to cancer, and to leukemia in particular.
Dr. Dodge knows plenty about leukemia – his son David was diagnosed with childhood leukemia at the age of six. “He was a kid playing T-ball and he was having unusual bone aches and pains,” says Dr. Dodge. “For several nights before the diagnosis was made, he was up sitting in my lap all night crying because he was in pain.”
Initially, Dr. Dodge and his wife Joan, a school counselor, thought it was some sort of infection, and then maybe juvenile arthritis. They went to Childrens Hospital in L.A. for an examination and soon found out that David had leukemia. The reason his bones hurt was that they were impacted – full of tumor cells.
After years of utterly exhausting chemotherapy and radiation therapy, David Dodge was declared cancer-free just before his 11th birthday. Leukemia is just one of the ailments induced by strontium-90 – though it is important to note here that David’s case was not necessarily linked to Sr-90 or to Rocketdyne in any way. But Sr-90 is one of the principal elements of nuclear fallout, and children downwind of the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown disaster experienced a radical increase of Sr-90 in their teeth.
