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Yikes... This brings to mind Depleted Uranium, which has been used in
Iraq, as well as off the coast of Nova Scotia and in the Balkans... No
wonder the "powers that be" insist low-level radiation isn't a problem...
Does anyone know how much of a problem recycled "hot" metal is in Nova
Scotia?
peace- daniel.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 16:53:04 -0700
From: Aaron Koleszar <aaronk@isn.net>
To: unlisted-recipients:; (no To-header on input)
Subject: The radioactive dinner table
>Environment News Service: Healing Our World Weekly Comment:
>The Radioactive Dinner Table
>URL: http://ens.lycos.com/ens/aug99/1999L-08-16g.html
>
>
>
>Healing Our World: Weekly Comment
> By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
>
>{Jackie Giuliano, a writer and a Professor of Environmental Studies, can
>be found in Venice, California, searching the Internet for a Geiger
>counter to test his knives and forks and wondering what kind of world his
>baby on the way will be entering next March. Please send your thoughts,
>comments, and visions to him at jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his
>web site at www.healingourworld.com}
>
>
>
> The Radioactive Dinner Table - An Industry Gone Mad
>
> We wait in the darkness!
> Come, all ye who listen,
> Help in our night journey:
> Now no sun is shining;
> Now no star is glowing;
> Come show is the pathway:
> The night is not friendly;
> The moon has forgot us,
> We wait in the darkness!
> -- Iroquois prayer
>
> When most of us think of radioactive waste, we usually think of sealed
>containers, carefully buried in deep pits in the ground in some remotely
>located storage facility. Yet because of government callousness and
>corporate greed, millions of pounds of radioactive metal are already being
>sold to make all kinds of consumer goods including knives, forks, belt
>buckles, zippers, eyeglasses, dental fillings and intrauterine devices.
>
>
>The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the Department of Energy (DOE)
>and metal industry representatives would like to see relaxed standards
>that would allow companies to recycle millions more pounds of low-level
>radioactive material by raising the current acceptable levels of radiation
>exposure for individuals.
>
>The U.S. Department of Energy, as well as many private businesses across
>the nation and around the world, have tens of thousands of tons of metal
>from decommissioned nuclear reactors, nuclear weapons programs, the oil
>and gas industries, and metals including carbon steel, stainless steel,
>nickel, copper and aluminum. Some of this material is contaminated from
>being in contact with radioactive isotopes while some is made up of old
>machinery that has radioactive residue on its parts. Thousands of tons of
>steel girders from buildings that housed radioactive substances are also
>part of the "hot metal" inventory.
>
>The destination for this waste has traditionally been radioactive waste
>storage facilities, but in a clever move to reduce costs and turn deadly
>waste into a commodity, the NRC and the DOE began efforts in the 1970s to
>turn the radioactive waste into a commodity for industry. In 1997, the two
>agencies established the National Center of Excellence for Metal
>Recycling.
>
>An industry group of metal recycling companies that want to profit from
>the bonanza of radioactive metal was formed in 1995. The Association of
>Radioactive Metal Recyclers (ARMR) is based in Knoxville, Tennessee, home
>of the DOE Oak Ridge Operations, a nuclear research facility since the
>development of the first atomic bomb. Their member companies wish to
>change the public's perception of the hazards of low level nuclear waste
>and even to encourage the EPA to lower standards for human exposure to
>radiation from this waste.
>
>Yet many studies show that exposure to even low levels of radiation can,
>over time, result in an even greater hazard than high level, short term
>exposure. A study done by University of California, Los Angeles
>researchers in 1997 showed that workers at a Rocketdyne facility at Santa
>Susana, near Los Angeles, who were exposed to radiation below the national
>standards had a six to eight times greater cancer risk than previous
>studies had shown. UCLA researchers examined the medical and personnel
>records for 4,563 employees that were monitored for radiation between 1950
>and 1993. Nearly a third of them had died of cancer.
>
>Some metal companies would love to see the standard lowered to 10
>millirems per year of exposure to radioactive material. This would allow
>them to legally convert many thousands more tons of radioactive material
>into consumer goods.
>
>
>But in 1990, the NRC studied the health effects of such a standard and
>concluded that such a dose over a lifetime would equal a risk of about
>four chances in 10,000 of fatal cancer. That means there would be 92,755
>additional cancer deaths in the U.S. alone. A high price to pay for
>industry greed. Yet the NRC is lobbying heavily for the use of this waste
>by metal companies.
>
>When issues of radiation exposure and dose come up, government regulators
>usually fail to consider the increased exposure that could occur when many
>different goods surround the consumer that are made of low level
>radioactive waste. If your refrigerator, baby stroller, knives, forks and
>even the steel beams in your home or office were made of this material,
>your cumulative exposure could be great.
>
>Sadly, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, rather than banning the
>use of radioactive waste products for consumer goods, seems to have
>abdicated its role by creating the Clean Metals Program, seemingly to help
>industry gain access to this dangerous material. The EPA says that the
>goal of the program is to "devise a self-supporting system to ensure a
>national supply of clean metal for general use."
>
>The amount of radioactive metal already in the homes, offices and
>buildings is astounding, both in the U.S. and abroad. From 1993 to 1996,
>5.5 million pounds of radioactive steel scrap has been shipped to mainland
>China and Taiwan from Louisiana and Texas. This metal is not the byproduct
>of any nuclear industry. When oil is extracted from the Earth, the
>radioactive material radium is often carried to the surface and becomes
>encrusted on oil drilling equipment. Rather than paying for expensive
>storage, cleaning and disposal at nuclear waste sites in the U.S., the oil
>companies would sell the material to other countries without such
>standards. Some companies have stopped the practice, but keep the option
>open for the future.
>
>Some of the radioactive metal shipped to China was measured as emitting
>2,000 microrems per hour of radiation, about 400 times the normal
>background radiation level. As of January 1998, there were 178 buildings
>containing 1,573 apartments that are known to be contaminated with
>excessive levels of radiation.
>
>Some Taiwanese officials knew of the radiation level of the steel bars and
>pipes used to build those buildings, but they concealed the information
>from the tenants for over a decade. Although much of that metal came from
>the U.S., there is a heavy traffic in radioactive metal from former Soviet
>bloc countries as well. Many of the people who live in those apartments in
>Taiwan are suffering from various cancers, birth defects, and unusual
>chromosome damage.
>
>If something is not done, this problem could reach crisis proportions in
>the U.S. The Oak Ridge facility alone has released 2,610 tons of
>radioactive metals to companies in the past decade. Other DOE sites
>released a total of over 11,000 tons during that time.
>
>
>A new contract between Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the U.S.
>subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. that would release over 100,000
>tons of radioactive metal to be processed and released into the
>marketplace is supported by the DOE. Vice President Al Gore may also
>suppport the contract. Last year, Gore spoke positively about the
>reindustrialization and clean up of the nuclear facilities at Oak Ridge,
>of which this contract is a part.
>
>The contract allows over 100,000 tons of radioactive metal (nickel,
>aluminum, copper and steel) to be "processed" and released into the
>marketplace to produce consumer products such as belt buckles, zippers,
>frying pans, forks, and baby carriages. There would be no limit on the
>final use of the contaminated material and there has been no notification
>nor consent of the steel industry, workers and members of the public who
>will be exposed.
>
>Concern over this reuse was expressed in a June 29 decision by Federal
>District Court Judge Gladys Kessler, who found that, "The potential for
>environmental harm is great, given the unprecedented amount of hazardous
>materials which [DOE and BNFL] seek to recycle. The parties have not
>provided the court with any evidence of the safety of recycling in
>comparison with any other method of disposal."
>
>With over 1,577,000 metric tons of radioactive metal stockpiled from 123
>nuclear power plants and weapons centers, the future could be hot for you
>and me.
>
>The greed and short-sightedness of our political and corporate leaders is
>astonishing. How much is a dollar worth? Is it worth the risk of cancer,
>birth defects and a diminished quality of life for us all? We must demand
>that this waste be buried at sites that should be made into monuments to
>human greed, stupidity and to an industry gone mad.
>
>RESOURCES
>
>1. Press Release from the Critical Mass Energy Project discussing the
>recycling of hot metals into consumer goods can be found at
>http://www.citizen.org/CMEP/radmetal/goreltr.htm
>
>2. Read a detailed account of these issues from the Progressive Magazine
>article "Nuclear Spoons" by Anne-Marie Cusac at
>http://www.progressive.org/cusac9810.htm
>
>3. Visit the EPA's Clean Metals Program website at
>http://www.epa.gov/radiation/cleanmetals/index.html
>
>4. For current action alerts on this issue with information on how to get
>involved, go to http://www.ratical.org/radiation/radMetalRecyc.html and
>http://www.nirs.org/DANGER.htm
>
>5. Read the story of a young boy whose death is being attributed to
>radioactive building materials in Taiwan at
>http://www.teputc.org.tw/issue/rad/rad1-eng.htm
>
>6. Send email to Carol Brower, EPA Administrator at
>public-access@epamail.epa.gov expressing your concern. Demand that they
>have a zero tolerance for radioactive metals. Also send email to: John
>Karhnak, EPA Cleanup and Reuse Center at karhnak.john@epamail.epa.gov
>
>7. Find out who your Congressional representatives are and e-mail them.
>Demand federal intervention to stop the flood of radioactive metals into
>the marketplace. If you know your Zip code, you can find them at
>http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html or you can search by state
>at http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html. You can also
>find your representatives at http://congress.nw.dc.us/innovate/index.html
>
>8. Read about the protest of the plan to make 100,000 tons of radioactive
>metal available for consumer goods at
>http://www.citizen.org/CMEP/radmetal/goreltr.htm
>
>9. Visit the website of the Association of Radioactive Metal Recyclers at
>http://funnelweb.utcc.utk.edu/~armr/default.html
>
>10. Some steel mill operators do not want radioactive scrap. Read about
>them at http://www.steelnet.org/sma/radscrap.html
>
>11. Visit the web site of a company that processes radioactive metals at
>http://www.mfgsci.com/metproc.html
>
>12. Gulf War Syndrome may be caused by exposure to radioactive waste in
>the form of depleted uranium shells. Read about it at
>http://www.thenation.com/issue/970714/0714mesl.htm
>
>
>
>
>
> ) Environment News Service (ENS) 1999. All Rights Reserved.
>
>
>=================================
>
>
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********************************************************
Judyth Mermelstein "cogito ergo lego ergo cogito..."
Montreal, QC, Canada <espresso@e-scape.net>
********************************************************
**********************************************************
Aaron Koleszar <aaronk@isn.net>
___________________________________________________
"Washing one's hands of the confrict between the powerful and the powerless
means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral." - Paulo Freire,
Brazillian educator
Prince Edward Island PROPAGANDA JOURNAL
look at http://www3.pei.sympatico.ca/brad/
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