nuclear-news

Uranium’s radiation danger: Port Hope and Huntington

“Contrary to statements provided by federal government agencies, no level of radiation is safe and it is cumulative — each dose adds to the risk of cancer. Children are 10 to 20 times more radiosensitive than adults, and fetuses are extremely sensitive,”

Port Hope Uranium Plant Contamination Circumstances Contain Similarities to Huntington’s Buried Uranium Plant, December 29, 2011  BY TONY RUTHERFORD HUNTINGTON NEWS Port Hope has a water treatment plant supplying its drinking water. Incredibly, adjacent to this water treatment plant, is a huge factory which emits uranium gas and dust into the air and Lake Ontario.

The Cameco plant manufactures uranium
fuel robs for export. Back in the 1950’s the Port Hope facility “used
to refine uranium for fuel rods in nuclear reactors” and it supplied
uranium for U.S. weapons until 1957.

Dr. Dale Dewar, Executive Director (Canada), Physicians for Global
Survival , has written about this  Ontario town on the shores of Lake
Ontario.

In the Common Dreams.org article she reported “hundreds of thousands
of tons of waste containing many radioactive carcinogenic elements —
uranium, radium, radon and polonium — accrued at the site and “were
randomly dispensed throughout the town in ravines and playing fields
and used as landfill and building materials in foundations for schools
and public buildings.”

Port Hope closed a “highly polluted” St. Mary’s School in 1975. It was
polluted with radon gas. After the closure , she reported that 200,000
tons of “severely contaminated soil” was “excavated” from 400
properties and “exported” into the Chalk River.
“Contrary to statements provided by federal government agencies, no
level of radiation is safe and it is cumulative — each dose adds to
the risk of cancer. Children are 10 to 20 times more radiosensitive
than adults, and fetuses are extremely sensitive,” the doctor wrote.
“Uranium waste is radioactive for billions of years, decaying
sequentially to radioactive elements ( “daughters”), all of which can
induce cancer or genetic diseases when entering the human body as hot
spots or “internal emitters.”

She revealed that “relevant research” has not been done to date on the
relationship between radiation and genes, which was “little
understood” at the beginning of the Cold War when atomic and nuclear
facilities were first in operation. Still, Dr. Dewar stated that “a
number of partial studies” have suggested increased cancer incidence
such as brain cancers in women and children, lung cancer in women,
arterio-vascular disease in women, and non-Hodgkins lymphoma ,
nasopharyngeal cancer…… http://www.huntingtonnews.net/17682

December 30, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, environment, Uranium