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Depleted uranium dropped on
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Radioactivity contaminating wellwater
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Baffling BNFL deal
Radioactive metals in food cans
Dangers of Euratom Treaty
Freeing WHO from radiation gag
Conflict resolution not war says the Oxford Research Group
Accross the sea
High levels of stillbirths and miscarriages across
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More radiation exposure of fathers, more stillbirths
Radioactive pigeons and fruit flies
UK depleted uranium fiasco
Thanks to the US Freedom of Information laws, it has been revealed that
at least 50 tonnes of radioactive depleted uranium (DU) lies scattered,
largely unregistered and unregulated, across the UK. The waste sites of
hospitals and aircraft manufacturers/decommissioners accounts for the
majority but, because of the lack of regulation and any official route
of safe disposal, unmarked and forgotten stocks could be almost anywhere.
The main sources of depleted uranium waste are decommissioned aircraft
(which use DU as counterweights in their wings), obsolete radiotherapy
equipment, and industrial counterweights and flywheels.
(7514-16) Simon Bowers and Paul Brown. Guardian Online
21.8.00
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DU
online
Environment & Health News reported on the horrors of depleted uranium
(DU) weapons when they were first used (in the Gulf War). We also covered
their use in Kosovo and are pleased that they are finally receiving serious
attention from the mainstream media. Here is some information taken from
The Guardian’s online DU debate, which was hosted by The Guardian’s
defence expert Richard Norton-Taylor, Emeritus Professor of Medicinal
Chemistry at Sunderland University Malcolm Hooper and Terry Wooding of
the Gulf War Veterans Association:
• Traces of uranium 236 have been found in DU in Kosovo, indicating
that it probably came from reprocessed nuclear fuel, rather than from
enriched uranium (as some have claimed because it is less radioactive).
This would be confirmed if traces of plutonium are also found.
• Much is made of the fact that this uranium is depleted, that is,
that the more radioactive U235 is partially removed, and that therefore
the material is less radioactive than natural uranium. The economics of
uranium isotope separation are such that only 80% of the U235 is removed,
leaving a significant amount in radioactivity terms. In any case, the
bulk of DU radioactivity comes from U238, which is only 6 times less radioactive
than U235, and constitutes over 99% of the material. It is quite disingenuous
to suggest that depleted uranium is significantly less radioactive than
natural uranium. (Clive K Semmens, B.Sc. B.A. Cambridge UK).
• The radioactive dust given off when a DU weapon explodes is similar
to the dust released during uranium mining. There is plenty of evidence
of health damage from the mining world.
• Claims of very low levels of radioactivity/toxicity, and therefore
health dangers, for DU refer to passing external exposure. This is a red
herring. When the uranium is outside the body, any radiation only impinges
upon the body while it is close to the source of the radiation. Assuming
this is only for a short time, the total damage caused by the radiation
will be small. In addition, external radiation is attenuated by passage
through any clothing and skin, before reaching live cells. In the case
of alpha radiation, this attenuation is significant.
• The real danger occurs when DU dust in the air is inhaled and lodges
in the body. Every day, month or year DU dust is inside the body the radiation
dose accumulates. In one year just 1 milligram of inhaled DU dust exposes
the body to over 390 million alpha particles and 780 million beta particles
– over 8000 times the current safety limits (Leonard Dietz). Some
Gulf War Veterans have been found to be excreting small amounts of DU
eight years on.
• The assertion that DU particles will only fall within an approximate10
metre range of the target is incorrect. From military manuals and from
a civilian case we know that small particles can travel up to 25-30 miles
on moderate breezes. It is these small particles that are the most dangerous
since they most easily enter the deep lung on inhalation. UK Ministry
of Defence documents state that the insoluble uranium oxide particles
will lodge in the lung and remain there for years, possibly for ever,
with the capacity to cause “lung, lymph, and brain cancers”.
There is also the risk of bone and blood cancers and osteoporosis has
been found in young Gulf War Veterans.
(7642) GuardianUnlimited 11.01.01
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Anti-radiation, Green and environmental groups have waged a long but ultimately successful campaign against attempts to slacken the UK Government's safety standards regulating the `recycling' of radioactive waste into consumer goods, road and playground surfaces, fertilisers and food packaging, etc. Despite powerful lobbying from Europe and the Nuclear Industry, the UK's Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) has decided to retain the much stricter safety standards Britain has used for several years.
The UK regulation states that any substance emitting radiation above 400 Becquerels per kilogram (Bq/k) must be stored on site rather than being allowed to join the morass of waste materials which can end up as ingredients in products with which humans and animals come into close contact. This, of course, still means that low level radioactive products emitting under 400 Bq/k are being included in food packaging, including glass, and children's playgrounds, but posing less danger to health than can occur in other member states of the EU.
Richard Bramhall, co-ordinator of the Low Level Radiation Campaign, the organisation spearheading the national protest, warns that the battle is not yet over. He is worried that the nuclear industry will try to dilute the average radioactivity of radioactive waste stocks by mixing them with non-radioactive waste to get them past the UK's strict limits.
ACTION - Write to the DETR congratulating them on their decision to retain the stricter British standard but also ask them to (i) reject any attempts to apply these standards to the wholesale clearance of nuclear waste and (ii) to implement legislation to prevent any dilution of radioactive waste stockpiles by mixing with lower or non-radioactive materials. Copy your letter to your MP.
The best contact at the DETR:
Tony Brown, DETR, Zone 4/E7, Radioactive Substance Division, Ashdown House, 123 Victoria Street, London SW1E 6DE. email: bss-directive@detr.gsi.gov.uk
(6879-82) Low Level Radiation Campaign
1.5.00
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Babies in the womb and infants are the most susceptible to the effects of radiation. Not only can exposure cause low birth weights, it can seriously effect cell health, increasing the risk of cancer, congenital malformations, and infant death. One historical example: the US infant mortality rate having risen 2% for whites and 35% for non-whites between 1950 and 1966 (the bomb testing era), plunged over the ten years following the Partial Test Ban Treaty which ended atomic bomb testing in Nevada.
Child radiation specialist Joseph Mangano wanted to find out whether the same had happened following the closing of 12 nuclear reactors 1987-98. First he looked at the five ex-reactors at least 70 miles from any operating nuclear reactor. He found that in just the first two years, the nearest counties experienced a 15-20% reduction. This compared to a 6.4% average decline across the US as a whole.
Focusing on one of these five, the Rancho Seco reactor 25 miles southeast of Sacramento, California, which operated 1974-89, he found that it was probably responsible for keeping strontium-90 levels in human bone high (these fell 22% in New York City, far from any reactor) and increasing levels of iodine-131 in pasteurised milk. When it was closed down, child mortality rates and the incidence of childhood cancer, congenital abnormality and child deaths from all causes fell rapidly.
(6918-20) Mangano,JJ. Environmental Epidemiology and Toxicology 2000;2:32-36
UK Government secrecy has made information about the incidence of cancers in small geographical areas very hard to obtain, impeding the work of health campaigners wishing to test evidence of links between radioactive emissions from nuclear power and weapons establishments and cancers. Now, a surprising and rare release of census ward-based data for England and Wales in December 1999 has made it possible for the Low Level Radiation Campaign (LLRC) to test the anecdotal evidence of raised levels of cancers around the two Hinckley Point nuclear power stations in North Somerset, near the town of Burnham-on-Sea.
Earlier work on radioactive pollution from the Sellafield reprocessing plant in Cumbria showed that there were three sources of contamination carried by the wind: directly from the nuclear plant; from sea spray (contaminated waste has often been dumped into the sea near plants); from dust blown up from beaches and mud flats contaminated by dumpings and leaks. The LLRC considered the residents of Burnham-on-Sea to be high-risk on all counts. The town is directly downwind of Hinckley Point and thus in the path of airborne emissions of radioactive gases such as tritium, carbon-14 dioxide and krypton-85. It is close to the huge Steart Flats mud banks, which are contaminated by liquid wastes from the plant. Its own `beach' at low tide is a muddy sand extending to the horizon.
An analysis of the newly-released data confirmed the hypothesis. The incidence of deaths from breast cancer in the Burnham North ward was double the national average (8.7 deaths expected, 17 recorded). The incidence of deaths from both breast and prostate cancer decreased the further people lived from the Steart Flats mud bank in the same pattern as that established for contamination inland from sea spray and plutonium around Sizewell. People living on higher ground (above 200 metres) had significantly lesser risk than those living on lower ground.
An analysis of gamma radiation levels in the area showed that the Steart Flats had levels three times the average inland levels and that the beach at Burnham had levels twice as high.
(7045-49) Jim Duffy. Radioactive Times 1.6.00 p1
For 50 years the authorities have covered up the health effects of radioactive pollution in the environment. Obsessive secrecy, suppressed and misdirected research, and downright lies have concealed evidence that radioactivity from nuclear reactors, bomb factories and weapons tests is linked to cancer, leukaemia, still births and birth defects. There is one way of cutting through all the claims and counter claims. That is by analysing children's milk teeth, which retain a permanent record of any radiation to which a child was exposed, and comparing this data to the medical histories of people living in the same area as the child.
The Low Level Radiation Campaign is now working on such a programme with Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass, Professor Emeritus of Radiological Physics at the University of Pittsburg Medical School. They need as many milk teeth as possible, as well as people prepared to be local collectors. If you are prepared either to donate your or your child's milk teeth to this research, or to be a local collector, please telephone the Low Level Radiation Campaign on 01597 824771. The testing process destroys the teeth so they cannot be returned.
(7111) Low Level Radiation Campaign 1.6.00
There is a large area at Harwell, a long standing nuclear site in Berkshire, called the Southern Storage Site. It is severely contaminated with forty years of plutonium, uranium and caesium-contaminated waste but the UK's Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) wants to develop it into a residential area of 275 houses, a shop, a sports pavilion and play facilities.
The UK's Radioactive Substances Act 1993 forbids causing exposure to levels of radioactivity greater than 400 Becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg) above background levels. By `background levels' was meant that occurring naturally in that environment. Unfortunately for the UKAEA natural radioactivity levels around Harwell are around 100Bq/kg meaning that their site could not emit more than 500Bq/kg - a prohibitively expensive clean-up operation.
To get round this they have persuaded the Vale of the White Horse Council to accept an interpretation of `background levels' as those in the immediate surrounds of the Southern Storage Site, which happen to be an already dangerous 700Bq/kg, and therefore accept a final maximum level for the Southern Storage Site of 1100Bq/kg! This is the level their current clean-up operation is now targeting.
Revised plans now place the residential area on land just adjacent to the Southern Storage Site which, once several feet of contaminated soil have been scraped off, will be used as an unrestricted recreational area and, probably, for the sports pavilion.
(7053) Radioactive Times 1.6.00 p12
Depleted uranium (DU), a radioactive heavy metal used to toughen warheads, explodes into a fireball on impact, spreading a fine, very toxic dust over the environment. Immediate inhalation is life-threatening. Scientists differ on its long term effects although the widespread use of DU in the Gulf War has been blamed by many for the soaring rates in birth defects and long-term illnesses, including cancers.
NATO has always admitted using DU in Kosovo, but refugees were allowed to return before potentially polluted areas could be fenced off and cleaned up, and it has taken over six months from the UN's initial request and four months from Secretary-General Kofi Annan's personal intervention to get site and quantity information out of NATO. It is now known that 31,000 rounds of DU ammunition were used in approximately 100 missions. Pekka Haavisto head of the UN Balkan task force said this amount was equivalent to 10 tonnes of DU.
(6556) Peter Capella. Guardian Unlimited 22.3.00
US scientists are very concerned that radioactive pollution from nuclear testing at its Nevada Test site 1956-92 may soon contaminate the well water in Beatty, a town of 1,500 people in the nearby Oasis Valley. When the tests were carried out scientists believed that underground water barely moved, and that radioactive particles would be sealed into cavities by the blast. Not so. They have now discovered that radioactive particles, like long-lived plutonium-239, can travel in water, and that the groundwater is flowing more rapidly than predicted by 1950's guesswork.
(6549-50) Martin Forstenzer. Reuters News Service
Local MPs, residents, trade unions and anti-nuclear groups are astonished by the decision to hand the safety management of the Aldermaston (nuclear) Weapons Research Establishment over to British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), the company infamous for the innumerable radiation leaks and the falsified safety records at Sellafield. They take BNFL's desire to cut 1,400 of the 4,300 staff as an extremely bad omen for improved safety at the plant. Minutes from a meeting of the Government's Environment Agency (5.3.00) state, "Recently there have been a number of incidents at BNFL sites which have led the agency to question seriously the competence of BNFL's management of radioactive waste and its commitment to environmental protection". BNFL is owned by the UK Government. They hope to sell it to the private sector eventually.
(6551-52) Anthony Barnett and Oliver Morgan. Reuters News Service 26.3.00
Anti-radiation, Green and environmental
groups have waged a long but ultimately successful campaign against attempts
to slacken the UK Government’s safety standards regulating the ‘recycling’
of radioactive waste into consumer goods, road and playground surfaces,
fertilisers and food packaging. etc. Despite powerful lobbying from Europe
and the Nuclear Industry, the UK’s Department of the Environment,
Transport and the Regions (DETR) has decided to retain the (much stricter)
safety standards Britain has used for several years.
The UK regulation states that any substance emitting radiation above 400
becquerels per kilogram (bq/k) must be stored on site rather than being
allowed to join the morass of waste materials which can end up as ingredients
in products with which humans and animals come into close contact. This,
of course, means that low level radioactive products emitting under 400
bq/k are being included in food packaging, including glass, and children’s
playgrounds, but posing far less danger to health than can occur in other
members of the EU.
Richard Bramhall, co-ordinator of the Low Level Radiation Campaign, the
organisation spearheading the national protest, warns that the battle
is not yet over. He is worried that the nuclear industry will try to dilute
the average radioactivity of radioactive waste stocks by mixing them with
non-radiaoctive waste to get them past the UK’s strict limits.
ACTION - Write to the DETR congratulating them on their decision to retain
the stricter British standard but also ask them to (i) reject any attempts
to apply these standards to the wholesale clearance of nuclear waste and
(ii) to implement legislation to prevent any dilution of radioactive waste
stockpiles by mixing with lower or non-radioactive materials. Copy your
letter to your MP.
The DETR, address?????
(6879-82) Low Level Radiation Campaign 1.5.00
Radioactivity over the counter
British Nuclear Fuels are treating and recycling radioactive metals and selling them to the food and drinks industries to make cans - with the Environment Agency’s blessing. More than 700 tonnes of radioactive metals have already gone on to the open market. They are treated with acid to reduce the radioactivity to supposedly 'safe release levels'.
(2210) A. J. McIlroy. Daily Telegraph 14.4.97 p2
Although it has previously stated that there is NO safe level of radioactivity, the UK's National Radiological Protection Board (NRPB) has now collaborated with the European Commission to allow even more low level radioactive nuclear waste to be included in recycled glass, metal and plastic products. ‘Safe’ levels have been raised for 300 different isotopes, including much higher levels for Strontium-90 (250 times higher), Plutonium 239, Tritium (2.5m times higher) and Caesium 137.
This 96/29/Euratom Directive, passed by the European Commission in May 1996, will put an end to much of the protection offered by the Radioactive Substances Act 1993. It exempts businesses seeking to dispose of, recycle or reuse radioactive substances from the need to report or seek authorisation provided that the total levels of radioactivity involved do not exceed new thresholds. Businesses can keep below the permitted limits by simply diluting the waste to lower the concentrations or by staggering disposal (the directive sets no time limit during which ‘total quantities’ have to comply). The thresholds are based on average levels, thus permitting ‘hot’ particles to escape scrutiny.
Potential contamination routes will include:
direct irradiation: consumer goods, including food and drink cans; metal, glass or plastic food containers, cooking utensils and equipment used in processing food; erosion of particles from the same sources.
contamination of the environment: leachate from waste in landfill sites; fallout from incinerated waste; direct application of radioactive waste onto farmland; degradation of all types of materials (erosion, weathering, rusting, etc.); dust from concrete (e.g. decommissioned pressure vessels and biological shields of nuclear power stations, which may be recycled for use in civil engineering project.
The move has been condemned as ‘lunacy’ by environmentalists, including Green Party scientist Dr. Chris Busby, author of Wings of Death, which reveals the dangers of low-level radiation from the nuclear industry. He has produced new evidence that children living near nuclear sites are at risk from leukaemia caused by exposure to low level radiation. The link has been made in a statistical analysis of mortality rates among children living in the south Midlands. (Publicised in the British Medical Journal 1.8.97)
At present under British law substances emitting even tiny amounts of radiation are tightly controlled but member states are expected to bring their laws in line with this astonishing decision by 2000! Ironically, and seemingly acknowledging the dangers, the new directive expressly forbids the addition of any radioactive substances into foodstuffs or toys, personal ornaments and cosmetics (all things with close skin contact).
A 1996 paper from Magnox Electric demonstrates
how much radioactive material may be involved. Speaking of the dismantling
of Capenhurst Diffusion Plant: “the decommissioning project .. aimed
to recycle as much material as possible .. and constructed a smelting
facility for low-active materials - aluminium, lead, copper, bronze, cast
iron, steel and nickel - with a capacity of 150 tonnes a week .. to produce
ingots for free release. Of the 160,000 tonnes of metal and concrete ..
more than 99.3% has been or will be recycled for unrestricted use as clean
material.”
ACTION - So far this is being kept pretty quiet.
Tell everyone! Write to the BBC asking why they are failing to fully cover
these issues. Write to your local and national newspapers. Write to your
MP & MEP. The Low Level Radiation Campaign has prepared a campaigning
pack - to get on their mailing list email: bramhall@llrc.org
Visit the Low Level Radiation Campaign website: www.llrc.org
(1891-92) Ian Burell. Independent
28.4.97 p4
(2268-71) Richard Bramhall. Low Level Radiation Campaign briefing 20.7.97
When radioactive hotspots were discovered by chance in tarmac and on a rugby pitch near an old nuclear science laboratory at Harwell, Oxfordshire the UK's Atomic Energy Authority made soothing noises - "levels slightly higher than normal" - but agreed to remove four inches of tarmac from all affected roads and completely excavate the portion of the rugby pitch then found to have been laid on top of a World War II bunker stuffed with radioactive waste. The "slightly higher levels" were, in fact, 10-100 times normal background levels. A suspicious local campaigner, Wendy MacLeod-Gilford, followed the lorries and caught them dumping the contaminated tarmac and soil in the middle of a residential construction site, directly opposite a primary school. When challenged, the contractors pointed out that they were perfectly entitled to do so because the levels of radiation were below the UK safety threshold of 400 becquerels per kilogram. "If it was so safe", MacLeod-Gifford asked, "why was the contaminated waste not used for roads within the Harwell complex, or for their planned business park?"
For further information on low level radiation and radioactive materials used in (e.g.) food and drink containers, on 01597 824771 (email: ) or visit the Low Level Radiation Campaign website: www.llrc.org or email Richard Bramhall bramhall@llrc.org
(6575) Lucinda Labes. The Ecologist 1.11.99 p400
The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom has launched a global petition to change the Agreement between the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) and the World Health Organisation (WHO). The agreement (Res WHA12-40 28.5.59) - made when far less was known about radiation - constrains the WHO to consult the IAEA before undertaking any actions concerning radiation with a view to settling the matter by mutual consent. It also restricts the information on radiation the World Health Organisation may publish. The petition requests the World Health Assembly to amend the agreement so that WHO programmes on the health effects of nuclear energy do not have to be discussed and agreed with the IAEA first and that all information on the environmental and health risks of nuclear energy must be disclosed.
The petition is for organisations to sign. If you have access to appropriate organisations and would like a copy of the petition, please contact: The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom on (tel.) 00 41 22 733 61 75 or (fax) 00 41 22 740 10 63
(6165-67) Women's International League for Peace and Freedom 1.1.00
The Oxford Research Group spends its time bridging the gap between nuclear weapon decision-makers and their critics. The meetings are off-the-record, confidential and not reported in the press. According to the Foreign Office they are often far more productive than the formal channels of diplomacy. A recent consultation of nuclear decision-makers has now been presented as the basis for official negotiations. The Chinese have now invited the group to co-host a seminar in Beijing on the next steps towards multilateral disarmament.
The Group wants to promote a new approach - peace banks rather than war chests. Dr. Scilla Elworthy believes that Governments should put serious money into conflict resolution. She argues that violence prevention is clearly more cost-effective than meeting violence with more violence and wonders what the $25 billion spent bombing Kosova and Serbia would have produced if it had been spent instead on peace initiatives. It is time to change the view recently expressed by NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson - "We don't count the cost of war, we pay". Contact: The Oxford Research Group, 51 Plantation Road, Oxford OX2 6JE. Tel: 01865 242819) www.oxfrg.demon.co.uk
(6370-72) Positive News 1.3.00 p6
More than 200 kilograms of plutonium discharged into the Irish Sea by Sellafield has settled in a bank of sediment. Now there are concerns that it is not staying put there, as scientists predicted, but has been washed round the north of Scotland into the North Sea. Concentrations of plutonium have been found off the west coast of Denmark with an isotope ratio which points the finger at Sellafield. Justin Brown, a senior scientist from the Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority (NRPA) says, "If these sediments (at the bottom of the Irish Sea) are confirmed to be the source, plutonium will be detectable in these waters for the foreseeable future".
(5721-22) Rob Edwards. New Scientist 27.2.99 p13
The town of Dundalk on the Northeastern coast of Ireland experiences high levels of stillbirths, miscarriages, birth defects and cancers. Mary Grehan, who has been studying medical abnormalities in Dundalk since the fire at Sellafield (then called Windscale) 40 years ago, has found that the disease patterns resemble those experienced around Chernobyl. More research is needed if the cause, and therefore remedies, can be identified. Grehan blames the discharges from Sellafield.
(5771-72) Karen Birchard. Lancet 4.9.99 p845
More exposure, more stillbirths
A study conducted by the Departments of Child Health and Statistics at Newcastle University, and partially funded by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), reveals "a significant association between the risk of a baby being stillborn and the father's total exposure to external ionising radiation before conception. The risk was higher for stillbirths with congenital anomaly and was highest for the nine stillbirths with neural-tube defects".
The study examined 248,097 live births and 3715 stillbirths registered in Cumbria 1950-89, and identified 9078 live births and 130 stillbirths to partners of male radiation workers at Sellafield. The father's likely exposure to radiation during the 90 days before conception was estimated from annual external dose summaries. Those with the highest exposures ran three times the risk of producing a stillbirth.
Ed.- BNFL have since briefed workers that there is no evidence of a cause and effect link and that workers should not change any plans for having a family.
(5934-35) CORE 26.10.99
Further to our report on radioactive pigeons and pigeon droppings in Seascale, near the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant, (Environment & Health News 3.2 page 22) it now turns out that a couple whose appetising bird tables attracted up to 700 pigeons on occasion had become mildly radioactive themselves. Their garden soil contained levels of plutonium and caesium up to 800 times higher than in other gardens in the village. In February 1999 the Ministry warned people within 16 miles of Sellafield not to touch, eat or kill pigeons. In a rare moment of altruism, British Nuclear Fuels has now resurfaced the couple's drive, relaid their lawn, hosed down their garage roof and replaced their bird feeders and garden gnomes. They also strangled 1500 pigeons and patched up all Sellafield's old outbuildings to keep the birds out.
This is not a one-off. At Hanford, a US Government plutonium production plant near Richland, Washington, radioactive mice faeces were discovered in the plant and in the workers' canteen. Radioactive specks were found on leftover food, waste bins, and in places outside areas controlled for radiation. The problem was eventually traced to fruit flies. Attracted by a new sugar-based sealant which had been sprayed on contaminated surfaces to prevent radioactivity escaping, the flies, apparently, fed on the sugar and laid eggs in the sealant. When they landed on rubbish and discarded food, they left behind radioactivity which was later transferred to the City of Richland rubbish tip. In October 1998 Hanford had to excavate the tip and bury on its site 191 tonnes of municipal rubbish as low level radioactive waste. A final example. Four stray cats born at a nuclear power station in San Diego (California) were found to be contaminated.
(5628-31) New Scientist 14.8.99 p48
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