BRIDGETON, Mo. — A new report says that a government agency’s report helped downplay the dangers of radiation at a St. Louis County landfill.
Uranium processing in the St. Louis area was crucial in developing nuclear weapons during World War II and the Cold War, but it has left the region with environmental and health impacts. Decades after Mallinckrodt Chemical Works began processing uranium near downtown St. Louis, the federal government continues to clean up nuclear contamination sites, including a creek and a landfill.
The West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton, Missouri contains tons of radioactive waste from the Manhattan Project. The landfill was declared one of the nation’s most contaminated sites in 1990, but the waste remains there today. In 2012, a fire at the landfill brought the issue to public attention, as nearby residents reported health problems like high cancer rates.
The report from Reuters says that a government agency tasked with evaluating the health risks, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), has consistently minimized the risks. The ATSDR has issued reports declaring the landfill safe, contradicting findings from other experts. According to Reuters, this allowed the landfill’s owner, Republic Services, to argue for a less extensive and costly cleanup.
The government has compensated many former Mallinckrodt workers or their survivors for cancer linked to radiation exposure, and residents near the waste sites suspect their rare cancers are also related. But, compensation for many St. Louis-area victims of radioactive contamination is unlikely. Congress did not reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act earlier this year.
The EPA is actively planning the cleanup of the Westlake Landfill site, gathering data, and testing soil over the past four years. The excavation process is more difficult because the area that radiologically impacted materials affect is larger than initially thought.
