Column: Idaho
Army Shipping Contaminated Kuwait Sand to Idaho Landfill
By Jill Kuraitis, 4-30-08
The U.S. Army is shipping 6,700 tons of contaminated sand to Idaho from Kuwait. It will arrive at American Ecology in Grandview, Idaho, sometime in May.
Grandview, population 470, is 42 miles south of Boise in Owyhee County.
The sand is from Camp Doha in Kuwait, a former Army warehouse complex used by Army Forces Central Command. The sand absorbed depleted uranium when some spent ammunition was caught in a fire (addition May 1:during the first Gulf War.)
It’s also contaminated with hazardous levels of lead, according to the two military guys who told me the story, whose branch and names won’t be used for obvious reasons. However, it’s no secret, since the story had already been written by Erik Olson in the Longview, Washington Daily News.
Chad Hyslop, spokesperson for American Ecology, did not return New West’s phone calls, but he told Olson that all the sand will be at the disposal site in Grandview sometime in May.
It will take 76 rail cars to run half the sand to Idaho, and then a second trip will be required for the rest. 152 of the smallest size rail cars would build a four-story structure about the size of half a football field.
Andrea Shipley, the executive director of the Snake River Alliance, an Idaho-based grassroots group with a mission to watchdog the energy industry and energy-related government departments, doesn’t like the idea of the sand coming to Idaho. She told New West that “this is a major concern. Depleted uranium is both a toxic heavy metal and a radioactive substance creating health risks that may be far more varied than is recognized in federal regulations today. Safe and responsible clean-up is critical to safeguard the health of Idahoans and our environment.”
The lead contamination, which the Army discovered before the ship carrying the sand to the Port of Longview arrived there, was nearly four times higher than the EPA standard for designating it “hazardous.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control, even very low levels of exposure to lead in children can cause learning disabilities, and may increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, strokes or heart attacks. Lead is also associated with impaired visual and motor function, growth abnormality, neurological and organ damage, hearing loss, hypertension and reproductive complications.
Whether or not humans might be exposed to the contaminated sand, either during transport, unloading, or processing at American Ecology’s Grandview landfill is not clear. No Army official returned calls. Follow-ups to this story will be posted.
Addition May 1: The full post about depleted uranium on Wikipedia can be found here, but here are two relevant paragraphs.
Depleted uranium (DU) is uranium primarily composed of the isotope uranium-238 (U-238). Natural uranium is about 99.27 percent U-238, 0.72 percent U-235, and 0.0055 percent U-234. Because U-235 is used for fission in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, natural uranium is enriched in U-235 by separating the isotopes by mass. The byproduct of enrichment, called depleted uranium or DU, contains less than one third as much U-235 and U-234 as natural uranium, making it less radioactive due to the longer 4.5 billion year half-life of U-238. The external radiation dose from DU is about 60 percent of that from the same mass of natural uranium.
Depleted uranium munitions are controversial because of numerous unanswered questions about the long-term health effects. DU is less toxic than other heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury, and is only very weakly radioactive because of its long half life. While any radiation exposure has risks, no conclusive epidemiological data have correlated DU exposure to specific human health effects such as cancer. However, the UK government has attributed birth defect claims from a 1991 Gulf War combat veteran to DU poisoning, and studies using cultured cells and laboratory rodents continue to suggest the possibility of leukemogenic, genetic, reproductive, and neurological effects from chronic exposure. Until such issues are resolved with further research, the use of DU by the military will continue to be controversial.
Updates to this story will continue to be posted.
Update May 1: NewWest blogger Irwin Horowitz of 6degrees - named because of his six college degrees including a B.S. from MIT in physics, an M.S. in astronomy and another M.S. in electrical engineering, has a strong interest in nuclear issues and follows them regularly. He told New West that the primary issue with the sand from Kuwait is the heavy-metal toxicity more than the U-238, and the radiation, in the form of alpha particles, doesn’t penetrate skin. Lead, said Horowitz, gets into the soft tissues of the body. “Depleted uranium could enter the body from ingesting it, breathing it in, or through surface skin cuts, so you’d almost have to play in the sand.”
More calls to American Ecology have not been returned.
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Comments
Questions as far as the eye can see...
I'm with Serephin, this smells to high heaven. How this became Idaho's problem is beyond me. Here's a link to an 06 annual meeting of shareholders for the &EndHTML;=</font></b>&SearchText;=<NEAR/4>("JOHN+M","COOPER")" target="_blank" >corporation.
As far as the CDC information, that has to do with lead. Lead is an element that is different from uranium, and the most common isotopes of lead aren't radioactive. Of course I recognize lead is a bad thing, and I'm not arguing about that. I'm arguing that people getting freaked out about low levels of U-238 is ridiculous.
I don't speak for SRA, nor they for me, but no doubt DU is toxic. Not as nasty as the plutonium dumped at INL, but for more nuclear info that is science based, please visit our website at http://www.MyIdahoEnergy.com
Here is one of the NIH website medical papers I used in my news release on Kuwait dumping DU here, that I also used on deaf ears to the legislative tax break for French Areva to enrich uranium in Idaho (DU is the waste product they will dump here).
1: Environmental Health Perspectives 2006 Jan;114(1):85-91.
In vitro immune toxicity of depleted uranium: effects on murine macrophages, CD4+ T cells, and gene expression profiles.
Wan B, Fleming JT, Schultz TW, Sayler GS.
Center for Environmental Biotechnology and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-1605, USA.
Depleted uranium (DU) is a by-product of the uranium enrichment process and shares chemical properties with natural and enriched uranium. To investigate the toxic effects of environmental DU exposure on the immune system, we examined the influences of DU (in the form of uranyl nitrate) on viability and immune function as well as cytokine gene expression in murine peritoneal macrophages and splenic CD4+ T cells. Macrophages and CD4+ T cells were exposed to various concentrations of DU, and cell death via apoptosis and necrosis was analyzed using annexin-V/propidium iodide assay. DU cytotoxicity in both cell types was concentration dependent, with macrophage apoptosis and necrosis occurring within 24 hr at 100 microM DU exposure, whereas CD4+ T cells underwent cell death at 500 microM DU exposure. Noncytotoxic concentrations for macrophages and CD4+ T cells were determined as 50 and 100 microM, respectively. Lymphoproliferation analysis indicated that macrophage accessory cell function was altered with 200 microM DU after exposure times as short as 2 hr. Microarray and real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction analyses revealed that DU alters gene expression patterns in both cell types. The most differentially expressed genes were related to signal transduction, such as c-jun, NF- kappa Bp65, neurotrophic factors (e.g., Mdk), chemokine and chemokine receptors (e.g., TECK/CCL25), and interleukins such as IL-10 and IL-5, indicating a possible involvement of DU in cancer development, autoimmune diseases, and T helper 2 polarization of T cells. The results are a first step in identifying molecular targets for the toxicity of DU and the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms for the immune modulation ability of DU.
PMID: 16393663 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
PMCID: PMC1332661
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16393663?ordinalpos=9&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
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Bubbles you remind of the site workers I grew up around in Idaho Falls adamantly insisting that there's nothing unsafe about nuclear but couldn't tell me the basis upon which they justified such an assertion because what they were doing was secret. The same thing they said about the secret iodine releases when I was a child. My thyroid is failing requiring me to take medication for the remainder of my life but there is "insufficient data" to establish a causal connection between my thyroid failing and those releases. How frickin' convenient.
The cult of arrogance and secrecy surrounding nuclear energy is part of the problem. I also have troubles with internal government reports coming to conclusions that finds the government did nothing wrong. I'm sure you garnered some of these attitudes when you did your time there with the navy so you'll forgive me if I take what your assertions with a grain of salt. I too am after the truth but I'll dismiss strident assertions from both sides if you don't mind. Certainly there is sufficient information that justifies the gross expenditure for a bunch of innocuous sand to raise some eyebrows.
That being said, as long as the sand is stored in solid containers and does not seep out or escape into the environment at the waste site, it should result in no measurable effects to harm the general public. But, I wouldn't encourage playing around in it :-).
How much would anyone want to bet that ol' Widestance is behind this? What does he have to lose? How much does his Swiss Bank account stand to gain?
So we should all just apologize and move along and accept our bonus checks like good little people. J. Doe has it all in hand, spin and everything.
Repugnants always go for the money. No matter who has it or what it is for.
Irwin, isn't another issue with DU the fact that it becomes aerosol upon impact? Is that material in the sand and can it become airborn again making it easier to migrate and ingest?
In talking to Jill earlier, I mentioned that one possible concern would be if the storage facility wasn't airtight and somehow some of the sand could become airborne (from a stiff wind, for example). Again, ingesting the material (even airborne particles) could cause some deleterious physiological effects, but I'm not fully conversant with the biological issues involved.
RE: "Since when did the Western states become an international dumping ground...? "
That happened in 1951. That's when the first plutonium from Rocky Flats, Colorado was dumped over our aquifer at INL. That's the same plutonium the final CERCLA plan leaves buried, in this flood zone. The 50's started the Atoms for Peace international proliferation of nuclear power plants for US nuke businesses. That foreign spent fuel waste is still being imported into Idaho, while no high level waste dump, like Yucca Mt Nevada is anywhere close to being forced open. We are also stuck with the melted Three Miles Island core.
The main question is are the silo dumps at Grandview going to contain this radioactive and toxic waste for the thousands of years it will be toxic? Since it is labeled as low level waste, they are only required to show it will be isolated for 100 years.
I have not studied Grandview geology, but at INL they have large historic 100 year floods, and even larger 500 year floods. The plutonium there is already leaking from the tineir floods they had in the 60's. When the plutonium ladden water is pumped to the surface for irrigation, the next brownout wind storm will be resuspending plutonium for inhalation, the worst pathway of exposure for kids and adults.
If Grandview is flood proof forever, they would probably suggest it instead of Yucca Mt...Peter
To some extent, I'm joking; but, to some extent, I'm not. Idaho gets two senators and some other nationally influential politicians and the votes cast for those Idaho politicians sure cause a lot of other people, across the country, a lot of trouble on a regular basis. Should Idaho then get to evade the results of that trouble?
No doubt the symbolic karma has truthful irony. Iduho politicians have volunteered Idaho for front line nuclear duty, and the flag waving has distracted the voters well. But we are closer than anytime, in my 20 years of duty, to the hopeful time when well intended Idaho families realize we are the butt of our politicians joke.
To 6 degrees, and all other detail lovers...
RE: Is the radiation from depleted uranium negligible?
It is not as hot as plutonium-239, and way less than the plutonium-238 that will leak from the pu-238 production cluster that Idaho was selected for in 2004. Please see the Jackson Hole law team and citizens fighting this at http://www.yellowstonenuclearfree.com
But here are 2 NIH website official articles on that subject. Keep in mind, while they slowly watch SOME soldiers with DU, the VA generally refuses to test the urine of ALL vets for DU. It helps them blur the stats, because many soldiers are not downwind of DU, depending on where they serve, and doses vary.
But anyway, bless our soldiers, and here are some quotes and references...Peter
The radiological hazard of DU has usually been downplayed by claiming “Since DU has a low specific activity in comparison to natural uranium, it is not considered to be a significant radiological hazard,” [#1 below]. The Armed Forces Radiobiology Research
Institute, however, exploring that issue in the same report, stated, “The potential contribution of radiation to DU-induced biological effects is unknown and the involvement of radiation in DU-induced biological effects could have significant implications for current risk estimates for internalized DU exposure.”
In measuring radiation damage of DU, compared to simpler heavy metals, by measuring increased dicentric frequency and neoplastic transformation frequency, on human osteoblast cells, they indeed discovered “Taken together these data suggest that
radiation can play a role in DU-induced biological effects in vitro.”
Leukemia is accepted as a radiation inducible cancer. A 2005 study did detect DU’s ability to induce leukemia as well, [2]. The Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute found, “The growth properties of leukemic cells from bone marrow, spleen, and lymph node were assessed and indicate that the FDC-P1 cells had become transformed in vivo. The kidney, spleen, bone marrow, muscle, and urine showed significant elevations in tissue uranium levels prior to induction of leukemia. These results demonstrated that a DU altered in vivo environment may be involved in the pathogenesis of DU induced leukemia in an animal model.”
[1] Radiat Prot Dosimetry. 2002;99(1-4):275-8
Observation of radiation-specific damage in human cells exposed to depleted
uranium: dicentric frequency and neoplastic transformation as endpoints.
Miller AC, Xu J, Stewart M, Brooks K, Hodge S, Shi L, Page N, McClain D.
Applied Cellular Radiobiology Department, Armed Forces Radiobiology Research
Institute, Bethesda, MD 20889-5603, USA.
[2] Mol Cell Biochem. 2005 Nov;279(1-2):97-104
Leukemic transformation of hematopoietic cells in mice internally exposed to
depleted uranium.
Miller AC, Bonait-Pellie C, Merlot RF, Michel J, Stewart M, Lison PD.
Applied Cellular Radiobiology Department, Armed Forces
Sisyphus, I'm sorry about your thyroid, but just because you have thyroid problems doesn't mean that they were caused by the iodine release. Did people have similar thyroid issues before nuclear power came about? What those of us who work (or worked, in my case) in nuclear power know is that the risk of low-level exposure is fairly small. ( http://www.umich.edu/~radinfo/introduction/risk.htm ) Normally, about 2000 people of a random 10000 person sample will die from cancer. If those 10000 people were each to receive an additional 1 Rem of whole body radiation (an amount way more than I got from nuclear power in my 21+ years in the submarine force), an additional 8 persons from that group would die of cancer. Obviously, it sucks to be one of those 8 persons. The question is how much of an economic hit do we want to take to reduce the potential death rates for a given risk.
Radioactive dust from depleted DU has been linked to surges in regions where DU rounds were used. This is completely different than anything you mentioned. The dust is what is important.
But you ignored that. I wonder why?......
But you know, play with people's lives when there is money at stake, that just seems like such the conservative thing to do.
Global Research
More here
Why do so many doctors disagree with you, Bubbles? Where is your medical degree? Where are your papers published?
I'm not a doctor; I'm just a man of science who's trained in the effects of radiation who wants to keep people from overreacting when it's not required. And since I have no idea who you are, I'll appreciate it if you not to use the term "Bubbles"... that's only for my friends like Sisyphus.
Is AE going to leave the stuff in those 306 containers? What a waste of steel. The externalities of this project are fairly astounding, as is the precedent that "any contamination on foreign lands must be shipped back to the United States for disposal" (as per the AE project manager, in the Apr. 15 TDN story) when you start thinking about the Iraq war.
To me, the baseline problem with DU is that govenments and scientists have had to try, over the years, to find something to do with it, because it is essentially a waste product. Besides being used in dental porcelain in false teeth, as well as being put in dyes and pigments (and I believe that at one time France tried to put it in drinking bottles, but found that it leached), and used as a stabilizer in aircraqft, the really only effective use of DU is to put it in weapons. So instead of looking towards a sustainable future in which, for example, we try to cut down on waste, we just think we can eventually contain or burn or use our waste, including using it on innocent civilians. It boggles my mind.
We are just so good at fouling our own nest....
I noticed that too Sharon. Jill, excellent job on breaking this.
And I did make a snarky comment over at Kevin Richert's place on this topic. I don't normally wade into the cesspool of the general commenting over at the Statesman.
You Repugnants anger hell out of me.
Actually, I'm a Democrat here in Idaho. I'm also a realist. I'm sorry if someone who looks at the science dispassionately angers you.
First, why entertain anyone who makes an argument that DU is not extremely toxic ( that's an obvious attempt at disinformation, and that person is most likely a hack, plant or whatever the preferred description is for someone who willfully spreads disinformation to minimize damning evidence.)
Second, and the big question....
What is the purpose behind shipping the sand from Kuwait to Idaho?
(if that was addressed in commentary I missed it due to the argument with the hack.)
http://www.americanecology.com/about_us.htm
http://www.2news.tv/news/18476139.html
Oh, and Chad Hyslop appears to have been Helen Chenowith's mouthpiece for years.
At least the slime sticks together well.
However, speculations are just that... I'd like to know the "official" reasoning behind shipping tons of contaminated sand, overseas, with a war going on, back to the states. I wouldn't mind also knowing the cost, how long it's been taking place (before the watchdog group found out). Was it the result of a deal? What deal....etc.