Radiation Alert: Niagara Falls

Radiation Alert: Niagara Falls
by Paul Zimmerman and Louis Ricciuti

Picture this. You're out for a drive on an idyllic summer day. Quite unexpectedly, because it wasn't there the week before, a sign comes into view: ROADWORK AHEAD - MERGE RIGHT. A little further on, as your two lanes narrow to one, you are slowed to a stop by the signaling of a flagman. Reduced to captive spectator, your mind drifts beyond the barrier on your left to the chaos of construction. A laborer working a large concrete saw is cutting into pavement. Dust is flying everywhere. Another workman nearby wields a jackhammer against reluctantly yielding concrete, scattering more dust to the wind. Further on, a loader scoops dirt and fill from the newly exposed roadbed and feeds it into a hungry dump truck. Again, dust is swept up by the wind and sent flying down the residential street nearby. A fully laden truck comes bumping along the torn up construction site on its way to the landfill, more debris dispersing wildly into the air. Only after catching a mouthful of metallic-tasting dust do you belatedly roll up your window.

With your urge to get moving frustrated by that walkie-talkied flagman, your attention drifts to the neighborhood bordering the construction zone. Beyond the far lanes and set back from the road, carefree children are romping in a playground while watchful adults picnic under a majestic maple. Further into the park, a couple is playing frisbee while two dogs, off their leashes, are playing an interminable came of tag. Turning your head right, a gang of boys have dismounted their bikes to supervise the chaos while sharing jokes above the cacophony of construction.

Witnessing all this sunshine activity around you, you remain innocently oblivious to the underlying reality being played out before your eyes on this summer day, 2010, in downtown Niagara Falls, New York. In truth, the scene is shrouded by a pall, both invisible and macabre. For you see, what is being excavated besides decayed roadway are dirty little secrets long buried. The dirt and dust taking flight upon the wind is laced with radioactive waste!

This apparition is no nightmare. It is happening today, now, as you read these words. Old asphalt is being torn up. The underlying bedding material is being excavated to a depth of more than three feet. Hills of debris, exposed to the open air, are taking shape on empty parking lots. It's full steam ahead for complete road reconstruction of a 1.8 mile portion of Main Street -- Lewiston Road (Route 104) from just south of Ontario Avenue to just north of Garfield Avenue and a 2.7 mile stretch of Buffalo Avenue (Route 384) from 10th Street to the I-190 section of the New York State Thruway, less than a mile from the falls.

Although touted as simple roadwork, the project also is camouflage, cushioned by insufficient oversight and little public awareness, for the cleanup of hazardous concentrations of radioactive material deposited in these roadways. Radiation surveys sponsored by the contractor, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) [Washington' s $8 Billion Shadow] have confirmed that long stretches of both roads are emitting gamma radiation at levels between 6,500 CPM (counts per minute) to 10,500 CPM. Emissions from soil in some areas beneath or adjacent to the roads range from 11,000 CPM to 15,000 CPM. These readings are referred to by the contractor as "background radiation." Peppering this background radiation are a number of anomalous "hotspots" with counts as high as 100,000 CPM. To gain a picture of what lays buried beneath the Honeymoon Capital of the World, "true" background radiation in the region emitted by soil and the local geology ranges between 5 and 50 CPM. Unwittingly, local residents have been receiving elevated levels of external gamma exposure for years from the hidden hazard laid literally at the their doorsteps. Their accumulated doses will now be compounded when they internalize construction debris emitting alpha and beta radiation. From the point of view of public health, the situation this summer in Niagara Falls is alarming. Both road workers and residents will be vulnerable to an inhalation hazard.

The origin of the unnatural material, euphemistically characterized as emitting "background" radiation, is open to question. The official story, originally proposed by a Manhattan Project chemist and touted by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1986, is that the elevated radiation readings are the signature of naturally occurring radioactivity present in brick and granite and the widespread scattering in the roadbed of a phosphate slag material, the byproduct of phosphorus mining. This latter explanation lacks credibility. No evidence or documentation has ever been produced to explain where this material came from, who transported it to Niagara Falls, and how it ended up under the city's streets. No split sampling conducted with citizen oversight or through an independent laboratory has ever been allowed to confirm the phosphate slag cover story.

A more reasonable explanation for the contamination that haunts Niagara Falls is that it is legacy radioactive waste, a byproduct of uranium refining, metallurgical production, and other experimental processes conducted during the Manhattan Project and the early years of the Atomic Energy Commission. This explanation is supported by the fact that more than 100 sites in and around Niagara Falls are contaminated with unnatural quantities and concentrations of radioactive material discarded by industry and that scores of streets, constituting dozens of miles of roadway, are underlaid with material manifesting many different isotopic compositions.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, due to the availability of cheap hydroelectric power and an abundance of water, Niagara Falls and its surrounding townships developed into an industrial sector that was renowned both nationally and internationally. By the start of World War II, the region was recognized as America's center for chemical, metal alloy and ceramics manufacturing. When the Manhattan Project got underway in 1942, all hopes for rapid success hinged on recruiting the sophisticated technological expertise and industrial capacity of the companies located in Niagara Falls and western New York [1]. Union Carbide's Electro Metallurgical Company in Niagara Falls and their Linde Ceramics division in nearby Tonawanda were awarded contracts by the U.S. Army to refine uranium ore mined in the United States, Canada, and the Belgian Congo. The refining processes created a huge stockpile of radioactive tailings waste containing high concentrations of radium-226, uranium, thorium and other radioactive elements [2]. (An enormous quantity of this material was trucked north, through Niagara Falls, to nearby Lewiston-Porter to be stored or buried at the Lake Ontario Ordnance Works. In the mid-1980s, those wastes which could be recovered were consolidated for "interim storage" and are currently located at the Department of Energy's Niagara Falls Storage Site [2].) Following the refining process of the uranium ore, Linde and other companies converted the extracted uranium oxides to uranium tetrafluoride (UF4) through heat and fluorination processes. This material was then transported up the road to Niagara Falls where Electromet converted, through the induction furnace reduction method, the UF4 to uranium metal. The uranium ingots and billets forged at Electromet were then sent either to Bethlehem Steel Corporation in Lackawanna or to Simonds Saw and Steel in Lockport. These companies machined the uranium metal, producing the fuel rods that powered the nuclear reactors at Hanford, Washington, which produced plutonium. In addition to its uranium business, Electromet also processed thorium and handled or manipulated other radioactive metals for reactors, targets within reactors, and weapons use. U.S. Vanadium, another Niagara Falls company, was also recruited by the Manhattan Project to refine and process uranium and other strategically valuable ores. Still another company, Titanium Alloys Manufacturing, now Ferro Electronics, recycled uranium and thorium metals as well as zirconium sponge and other ceramics and metallics. All of these companies were linked to Hooker Chemical, of Love Canal infamy, which produced acids and additives for uranium refining along with the chemicals essential to the recycling and disposal of uranium waste DuPont, another industrial giant, was heavily involved in the birth of the nuclear age. In its manufacturing facility located along the Niagara River, it created a gasket material, now commonly known as Teflon, which was an essential component in the gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for the enrichment of uranium to bomb-grade concentrations of uranium-235.

Together, these and other companies located throughout western New York produced a gargantuan quantity of chemical and radiological wastes. Most frequently, these were disposed of haphazardly. Scores of sites have been identified in the Niagara Falls area that became the repository of this dangerous material [3]. Both documented and anecdotal evidence exists that these industrial wastes were used as fill in construction and incorporated into building materials. Many stories, still whispered by aged residents, are routinely recounted of late night clandestine dumpings of factory wastes in ravines, drainage ditches and farmers' fields throughout western New York. Niagara Falls easily wins the contest, beating out Port Hope, Ontario, and Grand Junction, Colorado, before remediation, as the most radiologically contaminated urban area in North America.

Setting aside the controversy over the source of the radioactivity underlying the streets in Niagara Falls undergoing reconstruction, some information has been made public regarding its composition. Those conducting the radiation surveys restricted their work to the identification of radioisotopes produced from the decay chains of uranium-238 and thorium-232. What was found were abundant deposits of uranium, thorium, radium and lead. Radioisotopes of these elements have been attributed as the source that is producing the so-called "background" readings and the anomalous hotspots. The areas specified for special caution were in most cases characterized by elevated concentrations of radium-226. If radioisotopes are present from sources other than the decay chains mentioned, the public is currently not privy to that information. Radiation monitoring by an independent team is urgently needed to double-check the true composition of the material being cast to the winds. Further, numerous precedents exist which demonstrate that radioactive wastes originally designated for deep geologic burial are now being diverted by the Department of Energy to unregulated landfills [4]. Although this alternative is easier and cheaper, the tradeoff is ominous. Radioisotopes will continue to leach into the environment for thousands, millions, even billions of years before radioactive decay renders them benign. Is such haphazard disposal another secret accompanying the current Niagara Falls road reconstruction project?

The purpose for this article is to alert the municipality of Niagara Falls, the work crews of the contractor SAIC, any hired subcontractors such as Man O'Trees general contractor, which may be inadequately trained in radiation safety, utility workers and local residents that an inhalation hazard will be in existence during the months of the repaving project. Caution is warranted. Local residents are already reporting incessant dust clouds and uncovered equipment and piles of paving wastes. Admittedly, an action plan has been submitted by SAIC describing how the project will be carried out in accordance with safety regulations and that exposures will be kept "as low as reasonably achievable." But a legitimate question exists that must be asked: Will the plan on paper actually be carried out? Raising this concern is not unwarranted. Prior to the first Gulf War, the Army sponsored numerous studies on the feasibility and health consequences of using depleted uranium munitions in combat. Numerous safety procedures were established to insure the health of soldiers on the contaminated battlefield. However, when combat broke out in Iraq and Kuwait, the Army high command chose not to share the diligently prepared safety procedures with the troops in the field. Soldiers were left to confront the hazard unawares, and tens-to-hundreds of thousands received unnecessary internal contamination. The result? Gulf war veterans identified as being internally contaminated with DU, who were not injured with uranium-bearing shrapnel, are simultaneously suffering from an "undiagnosed illness" [5,6].

The nuclear age is littered with tragedies of unnecessary contamination of unsuspecting populations because of the pretense by government and the nuclear industry that the very real hazard of low levels of internal exposure is no hazard at all. This was the assumption of Manhattan Project scientists prior to unleashing the bomb. The idea remains firmly lodged in current mainstream radiation protection science. However, important aspects of this science are antiquated and out of touch with the current knowledge base. Under these circumstances, some assertions made on behalf of radiation safety are invalid and in some instances even fraudulent. A fuller discussion of this important topic can be found in the book by one of the co-authors of this article, A Primer in the Art of Deception: The Cult of Nuclearists, Uranium Weapons and Fraudulent Science. The chapter most relevant to this topic entitled "The Betrayal of Mankind by the Radiation Protection Agencies" can be read online at www.du-deceptions. blogspot. com.

In the last half century, numerous incidents have testified to the hazard to health from low levels of internal emitters, radionuclides absorbed from nuclear pollution in the environment which undergo radioactive decay while sequestered within the human body's interior. In many cases, injury was incurred from levels of exposure significantly below what the radiation protection agencies consider the threshold for radiation-induced illness. In the wake of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident in 1986, governments throughout Europe chose to uphold the myth that human generated radioactivity released into the environment produced no negative health effects. Consequently, they failed to advise their citizens to take simple precautions that would have protected them from the fallout. Warnings were never issued to avoid consuming meat or diary produced from grazing animals or drinking water drawn from surface sources. By such dereliction of responsibility, illness was produced in the population by levels of radiation declared by the radiation protection community to be safe and "below regulatory concern." For instances, independent studies conducted in Scotland, Wales, Greece, Germany and the United States confirmed that infants born during the 18-month period following the accident suffered increased rates of leukemia in their first year of life compared to children born prior to the accident or to those born subsequent to the accident after the level of possible maternal contamination had sufficiently diminished [7]. Chernobyl also produced an elevated incidence for a variety of birth defects in women whose doses were 1/50 the threshold dose for genetic injuries predicted from the study of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki [8]. For many years, the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency maintained that only 31 people died as a result of the Chernobyl accident. When this position became untenable, the figure was adjusted to approximately 4,000. However, the most recent research estimates the true number to be closer to 985,000 [9].

Illness induced by low-levels of internal emitters is not restricted to the environmental contamination produced by Chernobyl. Children living in proximity to nuclear installations exhibit elevated rates of leukemia. This was demonstrated in a review of 17 studies which covered 136 nuclear sites in the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain and the United States [10]. The authors of the review found that depending on the distance of the child's home to the nuclear facility, the death rates from leukemia for children up to the age of nine were elevated between five and twenty-four percent. For children and adults aged zero to twenty-five, increased death rates ranged between two to eighteen percent. In the US, women living in counties downwind of nuclear power plants suffer higher rates of breast cancer than women dwelling in counties upwind of the installations [11]

The point need not be belabored. The uptake of low levels of internal emitters can be hazardous to health. This summer, to commemorate the birth of the atomic bomb in Niagara Falls, the pretense finally needs to be put to rest that all is well with exposing populations to internal contamination. Caution is warranted. Work crews need to be made aware of the hazard they will be dealing with. If the dust cannot be controlled, respiratory protection is warranted. Similarly, the public should be warned to take precautions to reduce the risk of unnecessary exposure. At the very least, pregnant women and children should avoid the construction area. Errors made by being overcautious are more in the public interest than negligence followed by birth defects and cancer.

Paul Zimmerman is the author of the book "A Primer in the Art of Deception: The Cult of Nuclearists, Uraniun Weapons and Fraudulent Science". Louis Ricciuti has coauthored numerous articles on the hidden history of Niagara Falls for the newspaper ArtVoice in Buffalo, NY. ( http://artvoice. com/)

Bibliography

[1] Kelly Geoff, Ricciuti Louis. The Bomb That Fell On Niagara, The Legacy of the Manhattan Project in Niagara Falls. Artvoice Magazine. Buffalo, NY, May 24-30, 2001 through current issues - 2010. 12:21.
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[2] Kelly Geoff, Ricciuti Louis. The Bombs Keep Dropping. Artvoice Magazine. Buffalo, NY. 8:32.
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[3] Zweig M., Boyd G. The Federal Connection: A History of U.S. Military Involvement in the Toxic Contamination of Love Canal and the Niagara Frontier Region. New York State Task Force on Toxic Substances: Albany, New York; 1981.
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[6] Zimmerman P. Depleted Uranium and the Medical Mismanagement of Gulf War Veterans. http://www.du- deceptions. com/article2. html

[7] European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR). Recommendations of the European Committee on Radiation Risk: the Health Effects of Ionizing Radiation Exposure at Low Doses for Radiation Protection Purposes. Regulators' Edition. Brussels; 2003. www.euradcom. org.

[8] Schmitz-Feurerhake I. Radiation-Induced Effects in Humans After in utero Exposure: Conclusions from Findings After the Chernobyl Accident. In C.C. Busby, A.V.Yablokov (eds.): Chernobyl: 20 Years On. European Committee on Radiation Risk. Aberystwyth, United Kingdom: Green Audit Press; 2006.
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[9] Yablokov A.V., Nesterenko V.B., Nesterenko A.V. Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. New York; The New York Academy of Science, 2009. http://books. google.com/ books?id= g34tNlYOB3AC& pg=PR11&dq= google+books, +Chernobyl: +Consequences+ of+the+Catastrop he+for+People+ and+the+Environm ent&hl=en& ei=ddkPTMDrNoHQM LPdle4M&sa= X&oi=book_ result&ct= result&resnum= 1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwA A#v=onepage& q&f=false

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