KILLING OUR OWN
The Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation
by Harvey Wasserman & Norman Solomon
with Robert Alvarez & Eleanor Walters
A Delta Book 1982
Published by
Dell Publishing Co., Inc.
1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
New York, N.Y. 10017
Chronicling the Disaster of America's Experience with Atomic Radiation,
1945-1982
The following is part of the on-line reproduction of the text
of this book, and is reprinted here with permission of the authors,
Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon who own the rights to this
book.
Permission to distribute this book is freely given so long as
no modification of the text is made.
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/KillingOurOwn/index.html
Chapter 10
Tritium in Tucson, Wastes Worldwide
Like Agnes Engel of Canonsburg, Tom Charlie downriver from Church
Rock, and the Haag and Mixon families near Rocky Flats, radiation
has affected the life of Rita Linzy. A mother of two and a lifelong
resident of Tucson, Linzy knew little of the intricacies of atomic
power until one of her near neighbors accidentally leaked radioactive
tritium, introducing it into food being served to forty thousand
local schoolchildren. It happened in the summer of 1979. During
the incident--which Linzy called "our Three Mile Island"--her
hair fell out and scores of her neighbors began wondering if their
health had been damaged.[1]
The source of the contamination was American Atomics, a ten-million-dollar-a-year
operation employing some two hundred workers in midtown Tucson.
The company made a business of buying tritium from the federal
weapons program and inserting it into thin glass slivers used
in digital watches. The tritium makes the slivers glow without
electricity.
As it functioned quietly in Tucson, American Atomics was just
one of seventeen thousand medical, academic, industrial, and military
organizations licensed to handle radioactive isotopes in the United
States. Those licensees range in size from megacorporations like
General Electric and Westinghouse to small colleges and hospitals
that handle tiny quantities of isotopes for research and medical
purposes.[2] Literally hundreds of millions of items containing
some quantity of radioactivity are produced in the U.S. each year,
including luminous timepieces, static eliminators, false teeth,
welding rods, eyeglasses, electron tubes, fluorescent lamp starters,
ceramic tableware, and some smoke detectors.[3]
Many of the factories that produce these items are legally permitted
to release large quantities of radiation in the course of normal
operations. Cobalt 60 fabrication plants, for example, are allowed
to expose the public to twenty times more radiation than a commercial
reactor.[4]
Many of the small radiation by-product plants are also located
in thickly populated areas. American Atomics sat just a few hundred
yards from a trailer park, a church, a day-care center, a potato
chip warehouse, several homes, and the central kitchen for the
Tucson public school system. The plant regularly leaked large
quantities of tritium gas into the atmosphere--285,000 curies
of it in 1978 alone, according to company records. In September
of that year a maintenance worker opened the wrong valve and sent
into the Tucson air a single "puff" of twenty-one thousand
curies, a sizable dose. The public was not informed.[5]
But tritium can be deadly. A radioactive form of hydrogen, it
has a half-life of twelve years. Because it gives off relatively
small amounts of beta (electron) radiation, it is considered less
dangerous than many other isotopes. However tritium behaves chemically
and biochemically like ordinary hydrogen. When ingested, it can
incorporate itself into all forms of body cells, including those
of the reproductive system. Researchers theorize that because
of its ability to act like regular water, tritium can incorporate
with the DNA in living cells, multiplying the prospects for damage
leading to genetic mutations and cancer[6]
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1. Arizona Daily Star, June 3, 1979.
2. Clair Miles, NRC, interview, February 1981.
3. Buckley, et al., Environmental Assessment of Consumer Products
Containing Radioactive Material, NUREG CR-1755 (Washington, D.C.:
NRC).
4. 10 Code of Federal Regulations, Part 40. As of December 1979
the public exposure limit at "nuclear fuel cycle" facilities
such as power reactors and fabrication plants was set at twenty-five
mrem. But the limits at "by-product" facilities, waste
dumps, weapons plants, and certain industrial facilities was set
twenty times higher--at five hundred millirem.
5. Arizona Daily Star, April 15, 1979, and January 4, 1981.
6. H. Kasche, et al., "Dose
Estimations for Tritium and C-14 Released in the Nuclear Fuel
Cycle--A Biological and Radiobiological Evaluation," University of Bremen, SAIU, available
through Environmental Policy Center.
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Tritium in the Cake
In addition to tritium, at least one worker at American Atomics
was also contaminated with "hot" oil. Other workers
charged the company regularly falsified quality-control data and
deliberately mislabeled radioactive cargo to avoid air-freight
restrictions. In all, the company seemed a tragic throwback to
the days of radium-dial painting--a practice tritium slivers made
obsolete.[7]
Finally, American Atomics employee Elaine Hunter blasted the company
in a letter printed in the local Arizona Daily Star. She was quitting
work at American Atomics, she said, "not in fear of radioactivity,"
but "in disgust and anger that those greedy men were making
a fast buck while jeopardizing the physical and emotional well-being
of those involved with the fabrication of their product.[8]
Meanwhile plant neighbors complained of emission alarms that rang
constantly. In August of 1978 the Arizona Atomic Energy Commission
(AAEC) inspected American Atomics and warned of large losses of
tritium because of sloppy handling. The findings were delivered
to AAEC director Donald C. Gilbert, who let them sit on his desk
for seven months. The reason for the inaction, Gilbert later told
Daily Star reporter Jane Kay, was that he had been assured by
Harry H. Dooley, Jr., that the situation was being corrected.
Dooley was an AAEC commissioner--and a vice-president of American
Atomics. The obvious conflict of interest apparently bothered
no one at the AAEC. Only when Director Gilbert was fired in March
of1979 during a commission shake-up did the report find its way
to the public.[9]
Four days after Gilbert's departure AAEC inspector Lynn FitzRandolph
was sent to American Atomics. He cited the company with four counts
of violating state regulations, and recommended that the plant
be closed. The company was "out of control," FitzRandolph
later explained. "I came away with pretty good ideas the
tritium was going up the stacks and into the sewer." FitzRandolph
was scorned at the time by some of his scientific peers, who told
him his demands for strict enforcement were "ridiculous."[10]
But in the spring of 1979 the Star also reported the company had
been dumping radioactive liquid "down the drain," directly
into the city sewer system, without filtration or monitoring.
American Atomics replied that the total radioactive content was
"very low."[11]
But routine tests in early June at the Tucson school system's
central kitchen, near the plant, found food with radiation counts
2.5 times above permissible levels. The kitchen regularly fed
approximately forty thousand students. Water in cake that had
been served to twenty-eight thousand pupils contained fifty-six
thousand picocuries per liter; federal standards allowed only
twenty-thousand picocuries. Vegetation outside the kitchen tested
at levels thirty-six times the legal limit. Radiation, said acting
AAEC director Kenneth Geiser, was "in the humidity in the
air. Everywhere. And all the time. Cake or bread left on a table
gets kind of soggy; it picks up moisture like a sponge--and tritium
with it."
Tucson was shocked. The school board was soon forced to bury seventeen
thousand cases of food. In all some $300,000 in perishables and
$90,000 in canned goods were destroyed, at taxpayer expense.[12]
Meanwhile urine tests of people living near the plant revealed
at least six cases of abnormal levels of tritium. Six-year-old
Tony Bruckmeier tested at 89,100 picocuries per liter, a level
termed by Gail Schmidt of the Bureau of Radiation Health as "small
but not negligible."[13] Though federal officials emphasized
the levels were not likely to be harmful, local residents had
their doubts. Mrs. Gloria Mendoza, who had lived in the neighborhood
more than a quarter century, showed levels of 71,700 picocuries
per liter. The AAEC, she told the Star, "told us to see our
own physicians or call the Health Department. They told me it
was nothing to be alarmed about. But I've had blisters inside
my mouth, and the doctors say they haven't seen anything like
it since World War II. It's all cracked and constantly purplish
red."
"They told us they were making little components," said
Joe Valenzuela, a grandfather and amateur gardener who lived in
the same house for thirty years. "They never said they were
using radioactive materials. No one knew. . . . The prevailing
winds are south to southwest, and we're right here," he continued.
"We have no defense against this. The employees work eight
hours and wear coats and gloves. But my wife is here 24 hours.
What about her kitchen?"[14]
When news of the contamination became public, parents began forbidding
their children to come into the area--even to visit grandparents.
Neighbors began leaving fruit on trees they had tended for years
rather than risk eating radiation. Backyard swimming pools were
also abandoned when they showed high tritium levels--one with
413,000 picocuries per liter, twenty times EPA drinking standards.
But American Atomics continued to manufacture tritium slivers.
"The safeguards are there," said company president Peter
J. Biehl. "The performance here is super, and we're within
the established standards. If we were a safety hazard we'd shut
down."[15]
They did. Faced with the possibility of an official hearing, American
Atomics surrendered its licenses to handle radioactive materials.
The Tucson City Council and Pima County had already voted to deny
the company permission to relocate within their borders.
The company then abandoned its factory, leaving behind tritium
and other contaminated wastes. A break-in, fear of fire, and other
problems at the deserted site brought on still more anger and
anxiety in Tucson. Finally, on September 26, Arizona governor
Bruce Babbitt used emergency powers to seize the leftover tritium.
The American Atomics experience, he said, had been "a complete
failure of regulation."[16] On September 28, six National
Guardsmen packed several hundred thousand tiny glass vials filled
with tritium into thirty-eight barrels and trucked them to a former
military depot at Flagstaff, where they were buried.
The experience left bitter memories in Tucson--and more. During
the height of the crisis health officials assured local residents
any ingested tritium would be eliminated from the human system
in three to six months.
But in the spring of 1981 a study of fifty former American Atomics
workers showed a majority with tritium levels still ten times
above normal. The ex-employees had not been exposed to high tritium
concentrations for at least twenty-one months.
Dr. Michael Gray of the Arizona Center for Occupational Safety
and Health reported that a survey showed a "long residency
period in the system of very low concentrations of tritium."
Some of the workers, he said, produced urine samples containing
tritium levels twenty times above normal. Rates of decay found
in the survey suggested that tritium "can reside in the body"
not just for the three to six months promised during the crisis,
but "for up to ten years."[17]
That was bad news for the people of Tucson, who banned all radioactive
production from their town in the wake of the scandal. "It
never entered my mind that they would even think of putting a
plant in this area when they knew it could contaminate a neighborhood,"
Rita Linzy told the Star at the height of the American Atomics
crisis. She was then suffering from an undiagnosed ailment that
left her feeling tired and feverish, and made her hair fall out.
Her dog's hair was also falling out.
When we interviewed her eighteen months later, she told us she
was feeling better, and that there was no firm evidence that her
ailment--or her dog's--had been caused by radiation. But she was
still worried. "I don't know if the illness was from the
plant or not," she said. "If any damage was done, we
won't know for twenty years. And there won't be anything we can
do about it."[18]
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7. Arizona Daily Star, July 18 and July 20, 1979.
8. Elaine Hunter, letter to the Arizona Daily Star, April 15,1979.
9. Jane Kay, Arizona Daily Star, interview, January 1981.
10. Arizona Daily Star, February 11, 1980, and October 4, 1979.
11. Ibid., May 14, 1979.
12. Ibid., June 2, 1979; and Associated Press, October 25, 1979,
as seen in New York Times, October 26, 1979.
13. Gail Schmidt, interview, June 1981. Dr. Schmidt told us that
EPA standards for tritium in drinking water are twenty thousand
picocuries per liter, constant intake of which could result in
a whole-body dose of four millirems a year. The NRC standard for
tritium in urine among nuclear workers is twenty-eight million
picocuries per liter. Schmidt calculated that if the tritium levels
in Tony Bruckmeier's urine had come from a single exposure, they
would reflect a whole-body dose of roughly 0.37 millirems. If
they reflected a whole year's constant exposure, Schmidt estimated
the dose at roughly 8.9 millirems. In a June 1981 interview Dr.
Alan Moghissi, principal adviser for Radiation and Hazardous Materials
to the EPA's Office of Research and Development, told us that
if he were the parent of a child who had suffered such exposure,
he "would not be concerned." Moghissi, who worked extensively
on the Arizona Atomics case, said the highest environmental doses
were estimated at ten to seventeen millirems. "There is no
such thing as zero danger," he told us. But Tony Bruckmeier's
apparent dose was "comparable to what one would receive on
a round-trip air flight from New York to Tucson."
14. Arizona Daily Star, June 3, 1979, and June 12, 1979.
15. Ibid., April 15, 1979.
16. U.S. Congress, House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs,
Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, Nuclear Regulatory
Commission's Agreement States Program, 96th Cong., 1st sess.,
July 19, 1977, pp. 2-6 (hereafter cited as Agreement States Hearings).
17. Arizona Daily Star, March 5, 1981.
18. Ibid., June 3, 1979, and Rita Linzy, interview, January 1981.
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A World of Waste
The closing of American Atomics in Tucson did not end the problems
it created. The leftover tritium had to be trucked to a burial
ground. Though no accidents marred that particular trip, other
shipments haven't fared so well. Every year the NRC and Department
of Transportation (DOT) log several thousand movements of radioactive
wastes, fuel, ore, medical isotopes, and the like over American
roads, rails, waterways, and airways. In 1979, when the American
Atomics tritium was moved to Flagstaff, 122 nuclear-related transport
accidents were reported, including at least seventeen that resulted
in environmental contamination.[19]
How many more went unreported remains unknown. But in November
of1980 the GAO warned that with DOT's "limited staffing and
funding resources" the agency could not "determine the
extent of problems involved in transporting hazardous materials"
let alone solve them.[20]
The problems seemed epidemic, from faulty vehicles and untrained
drivers to inadequate safeguards and sloppy packaging. Nevada's
governor Robert List, for example, complained to a 1979 House
Interior Committee hearing that "simple tape" had been
used to seal a metal container carrying liquid wastes from a Michigan
reactor into his state. The tape had been painted over to conceal
the problem. But the cask was dripping and may have contaminated
roads for more than a thousand miles. Three months earlier hospital
wastes being trucked into Nevada caught fire.[21]
These incidents and scores like it prompted List and the governors
of South Carolina and Washington to announce they would accept
no more low-level wastes into their states after 1987. Numerous
municipal governments--such as New York City--have banned the
transport of radioactive material through their streets altogether.
No such problems existed for the Tucson tritium, which got to
its burial ground under the aegis of a state emergency. But once
there it became part of a much bigger problem--the disposal of
atomic wastes, generally considered the Achilles' heel of the
nuclear industry. The issue has become so hard-fought that in
1980 the voters of Washington State overwhelmingly approved a
referendum to ban all further shipments of radioactive waste into
the state. And Ronald Reagan--whose campaign platform included
the strengthening of states' rights--instructed the federal Justice
Department to overturn the act and force the state to continue
accepting radioactive wastes against its will.[22] In June 1981
the federal district court in Seattle ruled against the state.
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