Wall St. Journal, Dec. 31, 2013:
- [There’s] a major [nuclear] dump site […] about 50 miles west of San Francisco [in] “a globally significant” ecosystem “that supports abundant wildlife and valuable fisheries.”
- [A]n estimated 47,000 containers lie at the site near San Francisco
- 2010 report from [NOAA] […] called the waste site a “potentially significant resource threat.”
The ’91 Study
- [S]tudy found fish contamination and recommended follow-up research
- A spokeswoman for the California Department of Public Health said […] researchers “didn’t find anything in the first survey.”
- “I would beg to differ,” Thomas Suchanek, the principal investigator and lead author of the 1991 study, said recently
- [P]lutonium in underwater sediment at the dump site was up to about 1,000 times normal background levels
- The study found americium, a radioactive decay product of plutonium, in some fish samples from the site as well as a comparison area about 60 miles away
- Regularly eating such contaminated fish, about a pound a week, could expose a person to up to 18.5 millirems […] A chest X-ray typically gives about 2 to 10 millirems
More ‘Studying’
- A 2001 federal study of part of the Farallon dump site [off San Francisco] found indications of leakage from barrels
- Estimates of the radioactivity amounts in the containers “could be off as much as a factor of 10 […] little is known of the fate of radioisotopes added to the sea.”
- [FDA] said that in 1990 it found traces of plutonium in fish samples from the site but at levels well within safety standards
- W. Jackson Davis, a now-retired professor of biological and environmental sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz […] [said] evidence showed environmental damage and health threats were already arising at the dump sites
- In a recent interview, Mr. Davis recalled that the more he learned about the subject, “the more appalled I became.”
- EPA and FDA would continue radiation sampling of commercial seafood purchased in cities, such as San Francisco and Boston, near dump sites