100+ Homes in Elliot Lake are badly contaminated with radon-generating radioactive waste used in construction.
InboxCOMMENTS BY DR. EDWARDS . . . . . 'Gordon Edwards' via Coalition for a Clean Green Saskatchewan
April 7, 2024
Background:The article below reveals the government's unwillingness to take any responsibility for radioactive contamination of homes in Elliot Lake that were built using radioactive waste rocks and radioactive sand (tailings) from the Elliot Lake uranium mines. Shamelessly, officials are now claiming that “waste rock” from mining is not classified as “radioactive waste”, when in fact the Government of Canada has always classified waste rock [
https://www.cnsc-ccsn.gc.ca/eng/waste/u ... illswaste/ ] as a significant portion of the radioactive waste inventory (over 380 million tonnes) from uranium mining in Canada.
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https://natural-resources.canada.ca/sit ... cess_e.pdf ]
The question of high radiation levels in Elliot Lake homes was the subject of a provincial inquiry in 1977-78. The radiation doses were primarily radon exposures as well as gamma radiation exposures. At that time I was asked by Homer Seguin of the United Steelworkers (the union representing uranium miners) to testify under oath as an expert witness.
The so-called “safe” level of radon referred to in the article below is exactly the same as the “acceptable” level of radon that was used by the government back in 1977-78 in the case of Elliot Lake homes. Back then, using only the government’s own published mortality figures from radon, I showed [
https://www.ccnr.org/lung_cancers.html ] by simple arithmetic that the CNSC's “acceptable limit” for radon exposures in homes would be expected to cause a 30 percent increase in the male lung cancer rate for those living in those homes at the “acceptable" level. That would mean 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. To be clear, these figures represent lifetime exposures.
Based on my testimony, the Environmental Panel recommended that the radon “standards” be re-examined. Such a re-examination never took place. Instead, the regulator commissioned an independent study [
https://www.ccnr.org/thomas_report.html ] by an epidemiologist from McGill, Duncan Thomas. His study fully confirmed my estimate of radon-induced deaths. The regulator produced a flimsy rebuttal rejecting the results of its own commissioned study.
So the excess radon exposures in Elliot Lake homes should have been flagged and corrected 45 years ago, but was not. And if Canada’s regulator has anything to say about it, the problem will still not be addressed as a blatant case of mismanagement on the part of the regulator.
Indeed, the one-and-a-half billion dollar radioactive cleanup now underway in Port Hope, involving hundreds of homes contaminated with radon-generating radioactive waste, was also known to the regulator as early as 1965. But the Port Hope radiation problem was similarly 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, President
Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility
http://www.ccnr.org= = = = =
Canadian officials found radiation levels in these northern Ontario homes ‘well above’ the safe limit. Their response: ‘¯\_(ツ)_/¯’ The number of homes in Elliot Lake affected by buried radioactive waste could top 100 — twice as many as previously thought.
By Declan Keogh and Masih Khalatbari, Investigative Journalism Bureau - Toronto Star, Thursday, March 21, 2024.
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https://tinyurl.com/3c2tez6e ]
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https://www.thestar.com/news/investigat ... b65b6.html ]