Plutonium found at more sites after fire
LISA STIFFLER SEATTLE P-I REPORTER
MSNBC
Aug. 3 - Plutonium was present at 10 sites,
including five Eastern Washington city
neighborhoods and five rangeland sites miles
apart, in the weeks after a fire burned 300 square
miles of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, air
sample analyses show.
YESTERDAY, THE DEPARTMENT of Energy
released test results showing plutonium releases at five
Hanford locations while the fire burned.
And federal Environmental Protection Agency tests
indicate plutonium was found in five Richland and Pasco
neighborhoods a few days after the fire was contained June
30.
�I did not anticipate these results . . . these results were
distinctly higher than the average for that area,� said Jerry
Leitch, EPA radiation program manager in Seattle.
The amount of plutonium found is below that considered
a threat to human health, he said.
But Gerald Pollet, director of the Hanford watchdog
group Heart of America Northwest, worries about human
exposure to the deadly particles, which can cause lung
cancer if inhaled.
�There was a significant risk of someone�s child breathing
a particle of plutonium released from this fire,� Pollet said.
Initial results released last month found one sample with
above background levels of plutonium. More careful
analysis of samples collected during the fire, the results
released yesterday, revealed the presence of plutonium at
the additional sites.
Last week, the Energy Department began spraying a
chemical soil stabilizer on hundreds of acres in the area
known as site 200. Most of the onsite air samples
containing plutonium came from this region. Plants that keep
the dirt and dust in place were burned off during the fire.
Exposure results are still not available for the hundreds of
firefighters who battled the blaze at Hanford, a former
plutonium production site.
Forty of the approximately 100 firefighters employed by
Hanford have submitted urine samples for testing for
strontium, another radioactive material that so far has not
been detected in any of the air samples. All firefighters
involved in the blaze have been offered free testing.
The test does not check for plutonium. Department of
Energy officials say they are testing only for strontium
because it is the radioisotope most likely to be present,
based on the areas of the reservation struck by fire.
Officials at the EPA and state Department of Health said
they don�t think Richland and Pasco residents who live
where the plutonium was found need to be tested.
�The levels (of plutonium) are not at the kind of levels
you would test people,� explained Debra McBaugh, from
the health department�s Environmental Health Radiation
Protection.
In the days during and after the fire, government officials
reassured the public that they were safe from radiation
exposure.
�. . . no known radiation releases occurred . . .,� said
Larry Olguin, Hanford site emergency director, in early July.
But the detailed, conclusive analyses of air samples taken
during the fire took weeks to complete, and only now are
indicating the actual releases.
The Energy Department says the plutonium exposure risk
is much less than the radiation equivalent of an X-ray.
But Dr. Tim Takaro, clinical assistant professor in the
University of Washington�s occupational and environmental
medicine program, pointed out that this comparison is
misleading.
�It�s apples and oranges,� said Takaro, who also is a
member of the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with
Stakeholder Participation, an organization pressing for
better cleanup at nuclear sites.
The source of the plutonium remains elusive. Despite
initial assertions by the DOE that the agency would not
attempt to trace the source, McBaugh said yesterday that
there will be sampling to try to determine where the
radioactive material came from.
She suggested that the source could be either from
radioactive waste disposed of at Hanford, or fallout from
weapons testing conducted in the 1960s and 1970s.
The June fire burned across at least one large region at
Hanford where wastes were buried and over two
waste-storage ponds that had not been used for many
years, the DOE said.
P-I reporter Lisa Stiffler can be reached at
206-448-8042 or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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