COMMUNICATING HEALTH RISKS: RADIOACTIVE WASTES IN NORTH ST. LOUIS COUNTY, MO

The War Department in the 1940s and a succession of federal agencies were responsible for the creation of atomic/nuclear weapons and their wastes. A St. Louis chemical plant processed ores to concentrate uranium for these weapons into the 1960s. The process combined pulverizing the ore and nitric acid separation of heavier isotopes. Poor waste management practices spread the contaminants widely.

St. Louis District (SLD) [US Army Corps of Engineers] was given responsibility in October 1997 for the Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) Sites in the St. Louis area. SLD assembled a team with many areas of expertise, including health physics. The 2005 Record of Decision (RoD) for the North St. Louis County Sites (NCoS) resolved the short list of Contaminants of Concern (CoCs) for the NCoS’ properties. The RoD determined the regulatory requirements (rr) that provide protectiveness for additional lifetime cancer risk to an individual is generally less than 1 in 10,000. The two NCoS’ contaminated source locations were controlled to prevent contaminant migration by 2002 and were fully remediated by 2006 and 2013.

Residents’ concerns for Jana Elementary School’s students typify the difficulty of explaining the complex assessments for protective remedial FUSRAP actions. The rigorous laws and approval processes can be so complex that even environmental firms, who have not previously had Environmental Protection Agency-approved radioactive waste projects, may not fully comprehend all the rr. A private contractor incorrectly reported [as reviewed by an independent body] “unacceptable levels of radioactivity associated with” FUSRAP wastes at the school. SLD provided later reporting that the school’s, April 2023 Final Status Survey indicates there is no added FUSRAP contaminant risk.