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Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility – Letter to the Editor.

Re: Radiation in Elliot Lake homes (Toronto Star, March 21 2024)

from Gordon Edwards, PhD, President,, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.22 Mar 24

The government will not take responsibility for radioactive contamination of homes in Elliot Lake, built using radioactive waste from uranium mines. Officials claim that “waste rock” is not “radioactive waste”, although the federal Government has always classified

waste rock as a part of the radioactive waste inventory (over 380 million tonnes) from uranium mining.

Excess radiation in Elliot Lake homes, from radon gas and gamma radiation, was subjected to a provincial inquiry in 1977-78. The Elliot Lake miners’union asked me to testify as an expert witness.

Using the government’s own published radon mortality figures, I showed that the “acceptable limit” for exposures in homes could cause a 31 percent increase in the male lung cancer rate for those living in those homes. That means an additional 17 lung cancer deaths per 1000 males exposed, over and above the 54 lung cancer deaths already reported in Ontario per 1000 males. These figures represent lifetime exposures.

Today’s so-called “safe” level referred to in the Star article is the same “acceptable” level of radon used back then. 

Based on my testimony, the Panel recommended that radon “standards” be re-examined. It never happened. Instead, the regulator commissioned an independent study by an epidemiologist from McGill, Duncan Thomas. His study confirmed my estimate of radon-induced deaths. The regulator rejected the results of its own expert study.

Excess exposures in Elliot Lake should have been corrected 45 years ago, but was not. Canada’s regulator still refuses to address the problem.

The $1.6 billion radioactive cleanup now underway in Port Hope, involving hundreds of homes contaminated with radon-generating waste, was known to the regulator as early as 1965. But the Port Hope problem was ignored by officialdom and specifically by Canada’s nuclear regulator until the scandal became too much to bear when, in 1975, St Mary’s elementary school was evacuated because the radon levels in the cafeteria were greater than those allowed in Elliot Lake uranium mines.

Gordon Edwards, PhD, President,

Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility.

March 23, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | wastes