Officials are testing for radioactivity in the sports fields, play yard, and classrooms of a Missouri elementary school after an independent report revealed the school might have been contaminated by nuclear waste dumped from World War II’s Manhattan Project.
The independent report found as much as 22 times the expected levels of the radioactive isotope lead-210 at the Jana Elementary School play yards in northern St. Louis, according to the Guardian. Some indoor spaces also registered the increased levels, according to the report by the radiation testing firm Boston Chemical Data Corp that was released in October.
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“Levels of the radioactive isotope lead-210 found on school grounds were entirely unacceptable,” the report said. It also noted that the lead emits alpha particles, which is a particularly biologically damaging type of radiation. Radium-226 was also detected in the school’s soil at double the expected background levels. However, the Army Corps has questioned the results of the report, which occurred amid a lawsuit.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which will now oversee testing, said that in 2018 and 2019, its own experts “identified an area of low-level radioactive contamination on a densely wooded bank of Coldwater Creek” just inside the school property but not easily accessible or dangerous, according to the outlet. However, the corps is conducting new sampling that will be released in the next couple of weeks. The creek, which houses multiple contamination sites, runs near the school.
Radioactive waste in northern St. Louis dates back to 1942, when the local company Mallinckrodt Chemical Works was contracted by the federal government to process the uranium that was used to make atomic bombs in New Mexico’s Manhattan Project. The waste from the project was stored near the St. Louis airport until the 1960s, when it was transferred to different dump sites. Clean-up endeavors of those locations, including Coldwater Creek, began in the 1990s but are still ongoing.
Students at the school are learning from home as officials test the building’s premises.
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It is unclear what effect radiation could have on the community, but a 2013 Missouri health study found that the number of cases of leukemia, breast, colon, kidney, prostate, and bladder cancers faced by residents who lived near the contamination sites was “statistically significantly higher” than the rate for the rest of Missouri, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Cases of brain and other nervous system cancers were “significantly” higher than expected among children.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Army Corps of Engineers and the Jana Elementary School.
