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View Full Version : Navajo Nation struggles with fallout from uranium mining




Natural Citizen
05-08-2015, 10:41 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co7XTlvdyCU#t=140

As part of a cleanup settlement, the US will pay out more than $13 million to start dealing with hundreds of abandoned uranium mines on Navajo Nation territory. Navajo officials tell RT it is just the first step on a long road ahead.

The funds will cover evaluations of 16 abandoned mines throughout Navajo lands, chosen from a list of 46 priority sites. There are hundreds of sites that still need to be addressed. By one estimate, there are more than 1,200 abandoned uranium mines within the borders of the Navajo Nation, a 27,000-square-mile territory stretching across Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.

A 2014 settlement set aside $985 million from a multi-billion dollar settlement with subsidiaries of Anadarko Petroleum Corp to clean up approximately 50 abandoned Kerr-McGee mining operations in the Navajo Nation.

Federal surveyors found rich uranium deposits on Navajo lands in the 1940s, and the government authorized private contractors to extract the ore for US weapons and energy needs. About 4 million tons of uranium ore were extracted from the area between 1944 and 1986, after which the mining was halted. The federal government, through the Atomic Energy Commission, was the sole purchaser of the ore until 1966.

Navajo miners worked without any kind of protective gear or decontamination protocols for wages sometimes less than $1 an hour. In her 2011 book, Yellow Dirt: A Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed, journalist Judy Pasternak wrote that the miners suffered radiation exposure four times that of the Japanese exposed to nuclear bombs during World War II.

In the 1950s, cancer rates among the Navajos were so low, they were thought naturally immune, wrote (http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/elist/eListRead/abandoned_uranium_mines_plague_navajo_nation/) environmental journalist Sonia Luokkala. By 2004, cancer had become the leading cause of illness and death among the Navajo.

A 2014 survey by the EPA of about 500 abandoned mines found radiation levels up to 25 times higher than normal. Many of the mines with the highest radiation levels were found within a quarter mile of human habitation.



Continued - Navajo Nation struggles with fallout from uranium mining (http://rt.com/usa/257061-navajo-uranium-fallout-epa/)

Suzu
05-10-2015, 11:14 PM
I lived in the area for almost ten years. There were huge piles of mine tailings all over the place, including very close to settled areas. The stuff gets picked up by the wind and washed into the ground by the rain. Aside from having to breathe it in, it turns up in spring water and in food from the fields. It's not as dangerous as depleted uranium but it's definitely not good for a body.