EPA agrees to update radon emissions standards from uranium mills

By Debbie Bell
The Daily Record

Sept. 7, 2009

The Environmental Protection Agency agreed Friday to update its standards on radon emissions from uranium mills, including Cotter Corp. in Cañon City.

Published Friday in the Federal Register, the agreement was reached following a 2008 lawsuit filed by Colorado Citizens Against ToxicWaste and WildEarth Guardians. The suit challenged the “failure” of EPA to strengthen nationwide radon standards at uranium mills, and the EPA agreed to conduct an expanded public process while revising and updating its radon standards.

CCAT representatives called the decisions a victory for public health.

“This agreement puts us on track to keep communities safe from radon gas emitted from the tailings at operating uranium mills,” said Sharyn Cunningham, CCAT co-chair. “For those of us living in Cañon City and other parts of the Rocky Mountain West threatened by uranium mills and in-situ uranium processing, this agreement is a huge step toward ensuring that my neighbors can breathe fresh air, free of cancer-causing radon.”

In a written statement following the agreement, CCAT and WEG said the accord should lead to stronger limits on radon emissions from uranium mills. Radon, a radioactive gas, is responsible for about 21,000 deaths annually in the United States.

The EPA now will update health standards limiting radon from operating uranium mills, which were set in place in 1989. An update to those standards, required by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, has not been done, so the two citizen groups filed suit to spur the update.

According to the EPA Web site, www.epa.gov, uranium is ubiquitous in the earth’s crust, meaning radon is present in almost all rock and all soil and water. However, the EPA says there is no safe level of radon, because radon decay products cause lung cancer. Radon is a radioactive byproduct of uranium milling and is released by mill tailings.

Currently, the EPA standards allow radon emissions at levels more than 6,000 times higher than background level threats, according to court documents.

Locally, CCAT formed after the Cotter Corp. announced plans to import radioactive waste in 2002. The grassroots organization said the EPA lawsuit and settlement were reached with the help of the Energy Minerals Law Center, a Durango-based nonprofit law firm serving communities impacted by energy mining.

http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/Top-Story.asp?ID=11619

Ore From Last Uranium Boom Still Scattered on Colorado Land

By Joe Hanel
Herald Denver Bureau

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

PARADOX - From the road, it looks like a pile of gray rocks. But a closer inspection reveals flakes of yellow and lime green - telltale signs of uranium ore.

The pile and others like it make up some of the 5,000 tons of uranium ore that remains on the surface from Colorado's last boom, according to a Department of Energy environmental study.

Five thousand tons of rock is only a few months of production from a mid-sized mine, but it's enough to concern Travis Stills, a Durango lawyer leading the legal challenge to the Energy department's plan to lease Colorado land for uranium mining.

The Office of Legacy Management, which issues leases on federal uranium lands, cleaned up all its old mine sites by 2001, according to court filings by Andrew Smith, a Justice department lawyer who is representing the OLM.

Piles of waste rock at uranium mines could cause trouble if water runs off them into creeks, said Angelique Diaz, an environmental engineer for the Environmental Protection Agency's Denver office. The piles are radioactive and give off radon gas, but not in significant quantities, Diaz said.

The Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety cleans mines that were abandoned before 1977, using mostly federal dollars but also money from state taxes on gas, oil and coal production.

With 17,000 abandoned mines in Colorado, the priority goes to open mine shafts that might be dangerous for hikers, said Loretta Pineda, director of the abandoned mines program.

"I do have some environmental funding, but it's pretty limited," Pineda said.

The BLM has asked the state to put several old mines in the Paradox Valley on its list, Pineda said. She had a project on tap near Uravan a few years ago, but it was put on hold when people started staking claims in the area. Anyone who opened a new mine would have to clean up the old pollution first.

For Stills, the cleanup of the old mines should happen now.

"Five thousand tons of uranium ore sitting on the surface should be somebody's priority," he said.

http://durangoherald.com/sections/News/2009/08/11/Ore_from_last_uranium_boom_still_scattered_on_Colorado_land/

Health Risks From Mines Covered Up: Department of Energy Files Reveal Legacy of Secrecy and Negligence

Disgusting and infuriating but not surprising, unfortunately. Can we really expect any better protection or information dissemination in Virginia? Let's learn from the past and leave the U in the ground. Let's let integrity triumph over greed.

by Joe Hanel
Herald Denver Bureau

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

URAVAN - Health experts working for the state of Colorado and the federal government knew about the dangers of working in uranium mines and mills 60 years ago, but they hid their knowledge from the workers. As a result, workers died from cancer.

This has been public knowledge since the mid-1990s, when the Department of Energy published the results of its "Openness Project," an extraordinary catalog of government failures in the decades after World War II.

The report blames state and federal bureaucrats for "intergovernmental buck passing and decades of study, a course that resulted in the premature deaths of hundreds of miners."

State and federal regulators did plenty of studies. According to the archives of the Department of Energy's Openness Project: On Aug. 25, 1949, Colorado health officials met with U.S. Public Health Service employees to discuss uranium mine and mill safety. The same month, the Colorado Health Department and Colorado Bureau of Mines asked the Public Health Service to do a formal study of the mines and mills.

Public Health Service official Duncan Holaday was in charge of the study, and he quickly found evidence that unventilated mines were exposing workers to cancer-causing levels of radiation. Vents would have helped lessen the danger.

But the Public Health Service couldn't get access to the mines without permission from mine owners. To get permission, inspectors promised the mine owners not to warn workers of radiation hazards, Holaday testified in a lawsuit brought by Navajo uranium miners.

"You had to get the survey done, and you knew perfectly well you were not doing the correct thing ... by not informing the workers," Holaday said, according to the Openness Project report.

In May 1952, the Public Health Service gave its initial results in a report that was released to only state and federal officials and mining companies. A news release said "no evidence of health damage from radioactivity had been found." But the Openness Project report notes lung cancer takes 10 to 20 years to show itself, and public health regulators knew about the risks as early as the 1940s.

In 1960, the Public Health Service at last gave the governors of uranium states such as Colorado what it said was a conclusive link between uranium mining and lung cancer. Yet the Atomic Energy Commission, the Public Health Service and the states continued their talks and studies.

The biggest radiation hazard for miners was radon, a radioactive gas that is formed when uranium decays. Although uranium is radioactive, the radioactive particles are most dangerous when ingested. That happens most often when radon is inhaled in mines with poor ventilation.

It wasn't until 1967 that the federal government finally set a standard for radon in uranium mines, about the same time Colorado and Utah started serious enforcement. Most small Colorado mines weren't ventilated until the 1960s, more than two decades into the uranium boom.

By 1990, miners in one study group had seen 410 deaths from lung cancer - almost five times the rate that statisticians would expect.

The judge in the Navajo miners' case called it the "tragedy of the nuclear age."

Congress in 1990 passed a law to compensate the surviving miners and millers called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act. But of the 165,000 claims filed, only 43,000 have been paid, according to Labor Department statistics cited in a 2008 Rocky Mountain News investigation.

http://durangoherald.com/sections/News/2009/08/11/Health_risks_from_mines_covered_up/

Don't Drink The Uranium

August 1, 2009

by Ann Garrison

Havasupai Guardians of the Grand Canyon.
Photo credit: Brenda Norrell

On July 21, 2009, Obama Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a two year "time out" on new uranium mining claims on nearly a million acres of federal land near the Grand Canyon, in response, it seemed, to the protest of environmentalists, and, Native Americans, who still suffer cancers and other illnesses at rates many times higher than the general population, consequent to uranium mining on or near tribal lands.

Cause for celebration? Not in the least. Salazar's announcement is straight out of Orwell's 1984. This two year "time out" is no time out at all, because new mining claims are not the issue. More than 10,000 uranium claims have been staked on federal land immediately surrounding the Grand Canyon in the last three years. According to Roger Clark, Air and Energy Director of the Grand Canyon Trust, if even 1% of these claims become mines, they could seriously contaminate both ground and surface water surrounding the Grand Canyon, which drains into the Colorado River and contributes to the drinking water of 30 million people in the Lower Colorado River Basin, in Arizona, Colorado, and California.

On the day that Salazar announced his faux time out, the Native Havasupai, who make their home at the base of the Grand Canyon's South Rim, began gathering to host a weekend teach-in and speak-out against uranium mining at Red Butte, a Havasupai sacred site they hope to defend from contamination and desecration by Denison Mines' plan to reopen its nearby Arizona One uranium mine. Denison, a collaboration of Dennison Mines, Inc. and Uranium International, was then reported to be only one Arizona air quality permit away from reopening the mine closed 20 years ago.

In November 2008, the Motley Fool stock adviser, in "A Fresh Jolt for Uranium," said that Denison's prospects, like those of other small players in uranium mining were benefiting from increased demand created by uranium mining giant Cameco's ongoing difficulty getting its jet bore uranium mine into operation at Cigar Lake, on Native Canadian land in northern Saskatchewan. In October 2006, while Cameco's Cigar Lake mine was still under construction, a wall of water knocked it into Cigar Lake and adjacent waterways.

The Fool also pointed out that uranium supplies from decomissioned nuclear warheads, a.k.a., "the bomb mine," are running out:

"As it stands, uranium usage routinely exceeds global mine production. We can tap decommissioned warheads and other stockpiles to fill the gap, but that won't last forever. The longer Cigar Lake is delayed, the faster we blow through above-ground supply. That would do wonders for the spot price of uranium."

On July 30th, 2009, nine days after Salazar's announcement, and, four days after the Havasupai concluded their protest, the Motley Fool named Denison as their favorite "penny stock" of the week, meaning, the cheap stock most likely to take off from a very low price. and, maybe even make you rich, on a very small investment:

''Uranium was recently at its lowest price level. With brent price increase, uranium and fossil fuels tend to follow the price increase,'' wrote CAPS investor jajege in June. ''New nuclear power plants are planned and will require more uranium production, especially after the stock of uranium from the nuclear weapons are running out.''

It's still a very risky stock, though, the Fool warned, but only because of its low capitalization of only $2.5 million, its heavy debt load of $100 million, and, the risky nature of mining ventures.

Not because of Interior Secretary Salazar's ''time out,'' and, not because of environmentalist and native resistance, although, in November 2008, the Fool did warn of ''delays in permitting and other pesky problems'':

'None of these companies is immune to mining mishaps. Delays in permitting and other pesky problems have pushed back production schedules pretty much across the board. Still, the growth outlook is very favorable for Denison, which makes it the sort of stock you should own.'

In 2006, the Navajo Nation Tribal Council passed a ban on uranium mining, the first native claim to sovereignty, over natural resources of its kind. Navajo environmentalists have been defending the ban, against enormous pressure, ever since. At Red Butte, members of the Havasupai Tribe said that they hope to enact a ban as well.

As with the Navajo ban, a fundamental question would then be whether uranium mining which endangers the water table well beyond the mining claim itself, violates a Havasupai ban, and/or, the environmental rights of wider communities, including the 30 million people of Arizona, Colorado, and California, who depend on the Colorado River's contribution to the drinking water in the Colorado River Basin.

Free Speech Radio News (FSRN) reported on the gathering at Red Butte, and Censored News writer/editor Brenda Norrell captured video: "Havasupai: Singing away uranium mining."

http://www.examiner.com/x-8257-SF-Energy-Policy-Examiner~y2009m8d1-Uranium-the-Havasupai-and-drinking-water-in-the-Colorado-River-Basin

Uranium poised for another boom

By Joe Hanel
contact@rmindependent.com

Warning signs and barbed wire mark the old townsite of Uravan. Once home to a uranium mill, the entire town was removed during a Superfund cleanup that ended last year. (Photo by Joe Hanel)

The Rocky Mountain Independent is running a three-part series of environmental snapshots from the Front Range. Part two examines how some Colorado residents fear that the industry and government regulators will repeat previous safety missteps.

No one wanted the piles of gray rocks with the yellow and bright green flakes. They lay in piles outside the vanadium mills in Southwest Colorado until World War II.

The suddenly, military men arrived and claimed the piles for the Manhattan Engineering District. A mill town called Uravan became a secret military city.

The yellow flakes became fuel for the first American atomic bombs, and Colorado’s uranium boom was born. For decades, the government bought all of the uranium that miners could find. But in the 1980s, the market crashed, and uranium resumed its status as a nearly worthless rock.

Now uranium is poised for a comeback. Companies are pushing projects near Fort Collins and Cañon City and in Southwest Colorado’s remote Paradox Valley.

“Population is growing, demand is increasing, and the world is also looking for affordable energy that produces no (greenhouse) emission and is very safe,” said Stuart Sanderson, president of the Colorado Mining Association.

Uranium prices have rebounded since the early part of this decade. Although, at $50 a pound, they are below their record $138 during a speculative bubble in 2007. A U.S.-Russian program to use fuel from old Soviet weapons in American power plants will end in 2013, which could create demand for domestic uranium. Also, nuclear power might become more popular as an alternative to fuel sources that emit global-warming gases.

Uranium critics scoff at the idea that it is a safe fuel source.

“I’ve been in misery, sometimes literally hell, for 41 and a half years,” said Reed Hayes, of Paradox, who fell into a vat of uranium in 1967 at a mill in Moab.

Hayes has suffered rashes all over his body and sometimes in his mouth and eyes. Of the 26 workers who started at the mill when it opened, 23 have died, mostly of cancer. By contrast, most of his high school class is still alive, Hayes said.

He opposes a new uranium mill planned for his valley, saying that the element of human error can never be overcome.

“I don’t want to see any more people die,” he said.

In every place in Colorado where a company has proposed a uranium project, a citizens group has risen up to oppose it.

• Powertech Uranium Corp. plans to open an “in-situ” mine east of Fort Collins that would leach uranium out of the groundwater. Coloradans Against Resource Destruction is fighting
the plan.Cotter Corp. plans to reopen
• its Cañon City uranium mill by 2014. It shut down the mill in 2005, and Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste wants it to remain closed. The mill polluted the nearby Lincoln Park neighborhood, and residents blamed it for causing cancer in their families.
• Energy Fuels Inc. plans to build a uranium mill in the Paradox Valley. Mill backers say it would spur the region’s dormant uranium mines back into production. But opponents in the Paradox Valley, which has become a haven for organic agriculture, want the region to turn its back on mining permanently.

Both the Cañon City mill and the Uravan mill — just outside the Paradox Valley — were on the federal Superfund list for environmental cleanups. Although the Cañon City mill remains, Uravan had a different fate. The entire town — homes, church, swimming pool, soda fountain — has been wiped off the map. All that remains is an office building and a barbed-wire fence marked with red-and-yellow radiation signs.

During the last uranium boom, government regulators failed to keep people safe. The Department of Energy published an extraordinary mea culpa during the Clinton administration, admitting that health experts in the federal and Colorado governments knew about the dangers of unventilated mines but hid the danger from miners. That story and many others are chronicled in the DOE Openness Project.

Congress set up a compensation system for uranium workers in 1990. But not everyone qualifies, and payments come slowly, if at all. The Department of Labor has paid only 43,000 claims out of 165,000 filed, according to a 2008 Rocky Mountain News investigation.

State health officials say things will be different this time.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has no applications on file for uranium mills. But Powertech, Cotter and Energy Fuels all will need radiation permits before they start operating. Warren Smith, of the state health department, said he expects Powertech and Energy Fuels to apply for their permits this year. When they do, it will trigger an intense 15-month review that includes at least two public meetings.

Steve Tarlton, who is in charge of the health department’s radiation program, says times have changed.

“When I was a kid, we didn’t have seat belts. Things are different now. The same is true of the uranium industry,” Tarlton said. “We have learned a lot from past mistakes.”

Joe Hanel reports from Denver for The Durango Herald and the Cortez Journal. Watch www.durangoherald.com and www.cortezjournal.com this month for a four-part series on uranium mining in Southwest Colorado.

http://www.rockymountainindependent.com/2009/07/uranium-poised-for-another-boom/

All Levels of Radiation Confirmed to Cause Cancer

This isn't news, per se, but it is vitally important information. It's from the National Academies of Science, the group who is to conduct the state-wide uranium mining feasibility study.

Washington, DC, June 30, 2005 -

The National Academies of Science released an over 700-page report yesterday on the risks from ionizing radiation. The BEIR VII or seventh Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation report on “Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation” reconfirmed the previous knowledge that there is no safe level of exposure to radiation—that even very low doses can cause cancer. Risks from low dose radiation are equal or greater than previously thought. The committee reviewed some additional ways that radiation causes damage to cells.

Among the reports conclusions are:

• There is no safe level or threshold of ionizing radiation exposure.
  
  
• Even exposure to background radiation causes some cancers. Additional exposures cause additional risks.
  
  
• Radiation causes other health effects such as heart disease and stroke, and further study is needed to predict the doses that result in these non-cancer health effects.
  
  
• It is possible that children born to parents that have been exposed to radiation could be affected by those exposures.
  

The “bystander effect” is an additional, newly recognized method by which radiation injures cells that were not directly hit but are in the vicinity of those that were. “Genomic instability” can be caused by exposure to low doses of radiation and according to the report “might contribute significantly to radiation cancer risk.” These new mechanisms for radiation damage were not included in the risk estimates reported by the BEIR VII report, but were recommended for further study.

The Linear-No-Threshold model (LNT) for predicting health effects from radiation (dose-response) is retained, meaning that every exposure causes some risk and that risks are generally proportional to dose. The Dose and Dose-Rate Effectiveness Factor or DDREF which had been suggested in the 1990 BEIR V report to be applied at low doses, has been reduced from 2 to 1.5. That means the projected number of health effects at low doses are greater than previously thought.


RADIATION RISKIER THAN THOUGHT— RISKS TO PUBLIC and NUCLEAR WORKERS

The BEIR VII risk numbers indicate that about 1 in 100 members of the public would get cancer if exposed to 100 millirads (1milliGray) per year for a 70-year lifetime. [1] This is essentially the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s allowable radiation dose for members of the public.

In addition, 1 in about 5 workers [2] would get cancer if exposed to the legally allowable occupational doses [3] over their 50 years in the workforce. These risks are much higher than permitted for other carcinogens.

Specifically, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission allows members of the public to get 100 millirems or mr (1 milliSievert or mSv) per year of radiation in addition to background. The BEIR VII report (page 500, Table 12-9) estimates that this level will result in approximately 1 (1.142) cancer in every 100 people exposed at 100 mr/yr which includes 1 fatal cancer in every 175 people so exposed (5.7 in 1000).[4]

The risk of getting cancer from radiation (in BEIR VII) is increased by about a third from current government risk figures (FGR13): BEIR VII estimates that 11.42 people will get cancer if 10,000 are each exposed to a rem (1,000 millirems or 10 mSv). The US Environmental Protection Agency Federal Guidance Report 13 estimates that 8.46 people will get cancer if 10,000 are each exposed to a rem.

The Nuclear Information and Resource Service interprets this as further evidence that unnecessary radiation exposures should be avoided.

“This means that the government is not justified in deregulating nuclear power and weapons waste—releasing it to regular trash or “recycling” it into everyday household items as proposed by 5 US federal agencies at the behest of nuclear waste generators hoping to save money,” stated Diane D’Arrigo, Radioactive Waste Project Director at Nuclear Information and Resource Service Radioactive (NIRS). “This also means that remediation of radioactive sites should be done to cleaner levels and that nuclear transport standards should be strengthened.”

Cindy Folkers, NIRS Energy and Health Project Director stated “These findings confirm that all levels of radiation are harmful. Since nuclear power routinely releases long-lasting radiation into the air, water and soil, we must avoid a new generation of nuclear power to prevent unnecessary exposures.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[1] NAS Report in Brief June 2005 BEIR VII: Health Effects from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation pp 2-3 (for 1 cancer in 100 people exposed to 100mSv or 10 r ).

More detailed calculation: National Academies of Science, Prepublication Copy, Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation BEIR VII Phase 2, June 29, 2005 page 500 Table 12-9. Table 12-9 indicates that average risk (cancer incidence for males and females) of getting leukemia or solid cancers is 1142 out of 100,000 exposed to 10 r. Thus a member of the public who lives for 70 years and receives the permitted 100 mr (or 0.1 r)/year could receive 7 r or 7000 mr in his/her lifetime. [US Nuclear Regulatory Commission permits 0.1 r or 100 mr per year above background to members of the public.] Comparing to BEIR VII’s risk estimate of 1142 in 100,000 at 10 r, to the 7 r lifetime dose permitted by NRC:(7r/10r= 0.7) we get 0.7 x 1142 = 799 cancers in 100,000 population at 7 r or 799cancers/100,000 exposed = 1 cancer in 125 exposed (to 7 r over lifetime).

[2] At 0.1 Sv (100 mSv or 10 r) the risk is 1 in 100 getting cancer (NAS Report in Brief Jun 2005 pp2-3) At 2.5 Sv (worker legal dose) the dose and risk are 25x higher or 25 in 100 (or 1 in 4) exposed getting cancer…but since workers are exposed later in life than the general public, adjusting for age would correct the risk to about 1 in 5 exposed to the full legal amount for their working lives getting cancer from those exposures.

[3] 10 CFR 20 subpart C, Occupational Dose Limits limit workers to total effective dose equivalent of 5000 millirems or 50 milliSieverts (5 rems or 0.05 Sv) per year. If it is low LET radiation, this is comparable to 5000 millirads or 50 milliGray.

[4] National Academies of Science, Prepublication Copy, Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation BEIR VII Phase 2, June 29, 2005 page 500 Table 12-9. There will be 570 fatal cancers in 100,000 exposed at 0.1Gy or 10 r. (100,000/570= 175) Approx 1 in 175 so exposed will get fatal cancer.

http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/postings/radiation-levels.html

Uranium Mill Project Makes Headway: Advisory commission, county planning director recommend approval

You really need to read Linda Goin's explication of this article at http://lindagoin.blogspot.com/2009/05/uranium-mill-project-makes-headway.html These uranium catastrophes that are on private land, like Coles Hill, are subject to far less governmental oversight than those on public lands. We know how little government oversight is actually done...and we know about the slaps on the wrist the government administers for transgressions. But if mining and milling on private land gets even less oversight, Coles Hill will operate in a shroud of secrecy.

By D. Dion
Editor, Norwood Post

Published: Saturday, May 30, 2009

The approximately 250 people who filled the Nucla High School gym last week were there to witness a different kind of rivalry than the basketball games that usually inhabit the venue. Instead, they came to debate the proposed uranium mill in Paradox Valley, a project that has electrified the fence between area residents who want jobs and those who are wary of the environmental impacts of such a facility.

The Montrose County Planning Commission held the public hearing to gather input about the proposed mill before making a recommendation to the county commissioners about a permit. The 880-acre project site is on private land zoned for agricultural use, not for industrial operations like processing ore, so it will require a special use permit for the proposed mill. The planning commission deferred its decision on the permit to a June 10 meeting, but both County Planning Director Steve White and the West End Planning Advisory Committee (made up of residents who live closer to the proposed project) recommended approval of the permit.

Although the majority of the crowd at the meeting seemed in favor of the project, either wielding signs of support or clapping after every pro-mill comment, there was also a lot of skepticism about the mill. The site’s neighbors and farmers in Paradox asked the commission to deny the permit, which they said was in conflict with how the surrounding lands are used.

“Agriculture is why we bought here,” said Martha Burgess, an organic farmer in Bedrock just a few miles from the proposed mill. “We feel that the contaminants would dangerously compromise our operations for both the animals and vegetables that we produce.”

Residents on the other side of the proposal, in Nucla, were put off by people from Telluride, Ridgway or Utah who expressed concern about the contamination of the water or air. Paradox may still be pristine, but Nucla is nearer to Uravan, the toxic remnants of an old uranium mill that produced yellowcake for the Manhattan Project. The uranium industry, mining and milling, has been a part of the culture in Nucla for generations. West end citizens argued that the advent of a new mill would provide jobs and invigorate the economy. Several remarked that they, or their families, had worked in the uranium industry before and that they don’t “glow in the dark.”

Glowing in the dark is not the real concern, of course — lung and kidney diseases, blood cancers and high mortality rates have been associated with uranium mill workers. Former Nucla resident Ryan Farmer tackled the elephant in the room, the health risks, and said that it wasn’t that the Nucla locals didn’t understand the risks. They do, he said. They just think that they are acceptable.

“Who here has lost a family member?” asked Farmer, and several people raised their hands. “If anybody knows the long term and health effects, it’s them. They’ve lived it. And they think the risks are worth it, and they want [the mill].”

A younger Nucla native, 21-year-old Mallory Rice, had a different perspective.

“The economic benefits are great for the community, however, they are very shortsighted given the history here … Please consider the long-term effects,” she said.

The planning commission gave Energy Fuels, the applicant, the opportunity to rebut the litany of negative comments, from the risks of contamination to the concerns about where the water needed to run the mill will come from or the possibility of earthquakes and accidents to the fact that the project is still under-capitalized, with just $35 million raised for the $150 million mill. After that, the hearing was continued to June 10 at the Friendship Hall in Montrose. Should the planning commission recommend approval, the matter will be heard by Montrose County Commissioners next.

Because the site is on private land [like Coles Hill], the only other agency besides the county that will regulate the mill operations will be the Colorado Department of Health and the Environment. No federal oversight or environmental impact statement will be required. (emphasis mine...SB)

http://www.telluridenews.com/articles/2009/05/30/news/doc4a218b2cbac7f201184926.txt

Uranium is harmful

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Chatham Star-Tribune

To the Editor:

I am writing because of former letters using the Bible to explain uranium mining is safe but the verses were changed.

According to the Bible, we are to protect the Earth. Below are the true verses:

"The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." (Genesis 2:15)

"The nations were angry; and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great-and for destroying those who destroy the earth." (Revelation 11:18)

"Treat the earth well, it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children." (Native American Proverb)

I believe God did not give us his earth to destroy God's earth.

God gave people free will, and free will has done evil and good.

The most evil of free will is greed and pride. Greed takes over logic and people who believe in uranium mining and nuclear power plants always saying uranium does not hurt or kill people.

Our government gives money to nuclear power plants, therefore enabling foreign governments to become rich. They have records earnings.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's priority is on the financial health of the nuclear industry, not on public health.

However, working for a nuclear fuel plant is not the same as uranium mining. All forms of uranium processing have accidents according to NRC.

Dr. Arjun Makhijani said at a press conference, "Uranium is forever. There is no such thing as an acceptable amount of radiation. Every level of contamination is an area of concern."

Uranium is defined as a metallic element that is used as nuclear fuel and is highly toxic and radioactive.

Exposure to radiation from uranium can occur in various ways. The breakdown of uranium products creates radon daughters. These can attach to dust particles and, if workers inhale the dust, the particles lodge in their lungs, where they release high doses of radiation.

This is believed to be why Navajo uranium miners face a risk of lung cancer that is 28 times normal.

According to the "experts," if mining is allowed, it cannot be harmful to people nor animals, but there are plenty of examples of uranium mining causing harm to people and animals.

Serious health problems for miners as well as nearby communities include:

Chromosome abnormalities in residents of Karnes County, Texas, where uranium was mined commercially starting in the 1950s;

An increase in birth defects in babies born to mothers and animals who lived near a uranium mine waste dump in New Mexico;

Excess risk of cancer mortality in communities near uranium mills in Spain;

An increase in lung cancer risk for residents living near uranium mines in Germany.

Some claim that underground water and water running in the streams have never harmed humans and animals, but uranium levels shut two wells and new health standards have a town eyeing alternatives in Texas.

Uranium Energy Corporation has been conducting exploration for uranium in northern Goliad County for over a year, leaving some families with contaminated water and iron bacteria that clogs up filters, renders well water undrinkable in some instances, and forces residents to purchase and haul drinking water.

There are too many examples of uranium mining accidents to list. Just a few include:

On April 7, 2003, McClean Lake & Rabbit Lake/Cameco suspended production due to underground flood.

In 1989, 2 million liters of radioactive water spilled into Wollaston Lake. The company was charged and eventually pled guilty, receiving a $5,000 federal and a $55,000 provincial fine.

By 1976 all 55 miles of the Serpent River system were badly contaminated with acid generating, highly radioactive wastes.

An official Ontario report noted that there were no living fish in the entire river located downstream from the mining wastes.

In 1978 alone, more than 30 tailing dam failures were reported.

On Feb. 26, 2007, an employee was burned with hydrofluoric acid and sent to the hospital for treatment.

The root cause of the event was determined to be that the uranium hexafluoride cylinder valve failed to seat at the Columbia, S.C., nuclear fuel plant.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission established a special inspection team to go to a commercial nuclear fuel plant near Wilmington, N.C., to inspect and assess circumstances associated with an event in which moisture was detected in a process vessel that should not have contained moisture so as to prevent a nuclear criticality.

There was a loss of criticality safety controls at the Richland, Wash., nuclear fuel plant.

Two uranium fuel plants in Lynchburg, Virginia, and Erwin, Tennessee, must immediately adopt stricter anti-terrorist measures such as more guards, vehicle barriers and patrols, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said on Aug. 22, 2002.

The NRC cited the Lynchburg nuclear fuel plant for inoperable criticality monitors.

All forms of uranium are polluting for water, land, and air.

So people, we have the right to protect our homes from greedy uranium people.

Deborah Dix

Blairs

http://www.wpcva.com/articles/2009/03/19/chatham/opinion/opinion01.txt

Indigenous Leaders Call for End to Discriminatory and Deadly Uranium Mining

February 26, 2009

CONTACT: Beyond Nuclear
Linda Gunter, Media Director, 301.455.5655 (cell) 301.270.2209 (o)

Radioactively contaminated air, water and land has led to genocide

TAKOMA PARK, Md. - February 26 - A group of activist leaders from indigenous communities, including Native American, Australian Aboriginal and Touareg from Niger - spoke out in Washington, DC today against the disproportionate discrimination against Native peoples caused by uranium mining. The group also included a prominent French nuclear scientist and the actor, James Cromwell. They called for an end to uranium mining and the nuclear power programs uranium fuels.

Uranium mining, necessary to extract the metal ore needed to produce nuclear weapons and fuel for nuclear reactors, has, for decades, targeted both low-income and majority indigenous communities around the globe. The Navajo Nation in the American Southwest has been burdened with more than 1,300 uranium mines most of which, now closed, have never been adequately cleaned up and which have left drinking water contaminated and a legacy of fatal illnesses, particularly cancers.

In Niger, close to 140 prospective uranium mines approved by the government threaten to deplete the northern Sahara of its already scarce water supply, threatening an elimination of the traditional nomadic Touareg. The French nuclear company, Areva, has already mined uranium there for 40 years, creating widespread radioactive contamination of the air, sand and water and high incidences of cancers and pulmonary illnesses. The pattern is similar in Australia where the government is attempting to seize Aboriginal land to make way for new uranium mines.

"We have lived through the horrors of conventional mining and milling," said activist and Acoma Pueblo spokesman, Manuel Pino. "They put the Jackpile uranium mine 2,000 feet from the village where many people have died of cancer who never earned one cent from the uranium industry but were victims of where they live. Now we are told the State of New Mexico will allow a uranium mining permit on our sacred mountain, Mt. Taylor where 19 pueblos have voted to ban any form of development. We are not going to let that happen. We will fight that industry tooth and nail to the very end."

"With self-government ripped from us, we will have little choice - either mine or move into the cities," said Mitch, an aboriginal woman who has fought radioactive waste dumps and uranium mining expansion. "Short term monetary gain will leave us with long-term deadly waste for generations to come, severing cultural links to land and customary law for the sovereign owners and non-Aboriginal people alike."

Dr. Chareyron, who has studied radioactivity levels in France as well as traveling to Niger, added: "When my laboratory went to the mining towns in Niger we found radioactive scrap metal from the

uranium mill being sold on the city market; uranium contamination of drinking water that exceeded World Health Organization standards; and radioactive tailings from the uranium mill stored in the open air. The situation is equally bad in France where tailings have been paved into school playgrounds and parking lots. But the French nuclear corporation, Areva, denies in its own press release that there is any contamination from the Niger mines. This is simply not true."

"In Niger we have seen enormous profits from uranium mining go to Areva and the Niger government, while the landscape is devastated, the fauna and flora around the mines destroyed and the land, air and water contaminated with radioactive dust, gases and liquids," said Touareg activist,Sidi-Amar Taoua. "The depletion of already scarce water supplies threatens the very survival of the Touareg as well as the local communities around the mines who are already suffering the many illnesses caused by the uranium mines."

James Cromwell, who lived among the Touareg in the 1970s and is a committed campaigner for the rights of Native Americans, concluded: "Indigenous and under-privileged people around the world suffer similar fates when it comes to uranium mining. They have most often become the unwitting victims of pre-meditated atomic poisoning due to corporate greed and government complicity and have received little or no compensation or medical support."

Cromwell, Chareyron and the indigenous activists will visit elected officials on Capitol Hill on Friday, February 27 and present at a Hill briefing lunch that day from 1pm-2pm at Cannon Legislative Office Building Room 122. In the evening they will be at a screening and discussion of Poison Wind, a 37-minute documentary about Native American uranium miners showing at Busboys and Poets, 14th and V St, NW from 5:30pm-7:30pm. On Saturday, all will present at the PowerShift 2009 youth conference on climate change at the Washington DC Convention Center. The panel, at 9am, is entitled: Human Rights, Uranium Mining and an Unfolding Genocide. Press is welcome at all of these events.

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/02/26-11

"A Daughter of Radon Remembers" Lake Elliot and Uranium

In April, 2008, we brought you a post on the retirement community, Elliot Lake Retirement Living (Ontario, Canada), a bit of which we've repeated below for easy reference. Elliot Lake had once been known as the "Uranium Mining Capital of the World".

http://sccagainsturanium.blogspot.com/2008/04/home-sweet-radioactive-home-uranium-and.html

In their ethically questionable reclamation of the abandoned mining community as a retirement community, one company vice president observed, "Senior Citizens have faced numerous hardships during their lifetimes, wars, depression, inflation. So what's a little low-level radioactive waste?"

The original post here (link above) also contains a comment from an SVAUM blog reader who shared her fears about her in-laws' decision to retire to Elliot Lake.

From our origininal post:

http://www.elliotlake.com/retire/

Centre for Excellence in Retirement Living

Up until the late '80's, Elliot Lake was known as the "Uranium Mining Capital of the World". As the mining era drew to a close, the City of Elliot Lake recognized the need for revitalization.

All the circumstances presented a unique opportunity for Elliot Lake to remake itself as a retirement haven.

Created in 1987, Elliot Lake Retirement Living began attracting its first retirees to this picturesque community nestled in the beauty of Northern Ontario.

Since then, Elliot Lake Retirement Living has been successful in its goals and has become known as the Most Affordable Retirement Program in the country and Elliot Lake, as a centre of excellence for retirement living.

This site consists mostly of pictures of some of the retirement buildings and opportunities in Elliot Lake, now the "Jewel in the Wilderness".

As an update and follow-up to our entire original post, we bring you a recently posted entry from NuclearFreeNB.org called "A Daughter of Radon Remembers". Its author grew up in the mining town of Elliot Lake. Her story, and pictures, further dramatize what happens to an area, and its inhabitants, when uranium is mined there. And her story is a further sad underscore to the apparent contradiction that is now "Elliot Lake Retirement Living".

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http://nuclearfreenb.org/2009/02/17/a-daughter-of-radon-remembers/

If Poplar Road looks like any street in suburban Canada, it should. The street, like the town where it’s located, was the product of a 1950s planning model that was applied to countless cities and towns across Canada. Two shopping plazas, precursor to malls, were at the center of the town’s suburban-like sprawl. At its peak in 1960, the town had 25,000 residents and the distinction of being one of the largest single industry mining communities in Canadian history. This was Elliot Lake.

Within a decade of its emergence from Ontario’s northern wilderness, the population plummeted to 6700, only to bounce back in the 1980s. The town’s population would rise and fall with every boom-and-bust cycle in the industry. Each cycle created a large turnover (up to 50% in 1981) of residents.

Elliot Lake wasn’t just any mining town. It billed itself as the “Uranium Capital of the World” (a title now claimed by Saskatchewan). At the town’s entrance, visitors were greeted by a giant model of a uranium atom. Between 1956 and 1966, there were 11 mines operating in the Elliot Lake-Blind River area. Two of those mines, Milliken Lake and Stanleigh, were less than three kilometers from Poplar Road.

Author Inka Milewski and her brother on Poplar Road circa early 1980s.
(Photo: Inka Milewski)

Gus Froebel was a uranium miner. He lived with his wife and children at 32 Poplar Road. In the early 70s, he developed lung cancer. At the time, the Workmen’s Compensation Board (WCB) and the uranium industry wouldn’t acknowledge there was a link between exposure to radiation in the mines and lung cancer. As far as the WCB, the industry, the Atomic Energy Control Board, and government-funded cancer research agencies were concerned, smoking among miners was the major cause of lung cancer. With thousands of men working in uranium mines, reversing this mind-set would have had huge policy and financial implications. Gus and the union who represented him were in for a long fight.

Forty years earlier, two Czech scientists and physicians published a landmark study in the American Journal of Cancer (Pirchan and Sikl 1932). They linked miners’ lung tumors with radon exposure in Czechoslovakian mines. Ten years later, Wilhelm C. Hueper, a world leading expert on lung cancer and founding director of the environmental cancer section of the U.S. National Cancer Institute, came to the same conclusion. He reviewed 300 years of radon data on European miners and found that radon gas produced lung cancer that killed more than half of all miners 10-20 years after their employment. He issued warnings worldwide, including in Canada. These were largely unheeded.

Declassified documents from the 1950s show that the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission told Hueper that references to occupational cancers among uranium miners were “not in the public interest” and “represented mere conjecture”(Nikiforuk 1998). Forty years after the Czech study was published and thirty years after Hueper’s warnings, a 1974 Ontario Royal Commission on the Health and Safety of Workers in Mines found that Elliot Lake uranium miners were experiencing twice as many lung cancers as expected. The report was filed the same year the WCB would hear Gus Froebel’s case.

Deadly Daughters

Uranium is a heavy metal, in fact the heaviest. Unlike any metal, uranium is radioactive. Trapped in ore and in the ground, uranium is relatively harmless unless it leaches into aquifers and contaminates drinking water or its deadly radioactive by-products (thorium-230, radium-226, radon-222, and the radon daughters: lead-210, bismuth-210 and polonium-210) escape through rock fissures and collect in the atmosphere or in homes.

Uranium deposits in Elliot Lake were low grade. It took one tonne of ore to extract one kilogram of uranium. The miner drilled, blasted, and mucked (excavated) the ore and mill operators crushed it. Through these processes, toxic radon gas and its deadly daughters were released. The gas is easily inhaled and exhaled. The daughters, however, lodge in the lining of the lungs and bombard the delicate tissues with radiation. As for the by-products, millions of tonnes of radioactive leftovers or tailings, they gave off 10,000 times more radon gas than undisturbed ore.

In 1932, the federal Department of Mines (as Natural Resources Canada was then known) knew from its own studies in Port Radium that “a hazard may exist in the breathing of air containing even small amounts of radon”(Nikiforuk 1998). The federal government would not set radon standards until 1967.

Tailings area for Stanrock mine (Elliot Lake). A wall of radioactive sand 10 metres high holds back the tailings.
(Photo credit: Robert Del Tredici, 1987).

Gus Froebel won his battle with the Workmen’s Compensation Board in 1974. It was hailed as a landmark victory. Lung cancer in uranium miners would now be recognized as being caused by exposure to radiation. Even so, making a claim wouldn’t be a simple matter. Miners filing claims would often have to jump through many hoops to prove their eligibility. It was a long, sometimes expensive, and not always successful process.

Not long after his victory, Gus died of his disease.

My father was also a uranium miner in Elliot Lake. Like Gus Froebel, we lived on Poplar Road just four doors away. Like Gus, and hundreds of other uranium miners, my father died of lung cancer that eventually spread to his brain. Despite having chest x-rays every year (as required for all miners), a lung biopsy, being hospitalized several times, breathing difficulties, and finally collapsing in the mine, local doctors attributed his condition to all kinds of diseases except work-related lung cancer. Convinced my father’s case was eligible for compensation, we sought second and third medical opinions, hired a lawyer, and eventually won. Not all miners and their families were as determined.

And, like Gus, my father didn’t live long after his victory.

While the last mine in Elliot Lake closed in 1996, the toxic legacy of uranium mining lives on in the miners, the majority of whom with their families are scattered across Canada. Any meaningful assessment of the true health impacts of uranium mining on Elliot Lake residents is almost impossible because of the high turnover in the population over the decades. The massive uranium tailing areas are legend. They are the subject of hundreds of studies, documentaries, books, and photos and support an army of scientists and engineers that are trying to figure out how to contain the contamination.

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Information Sources and Additional Reading
(all sources available online)

Edwards, G. 1992. Uranium: The Deadliest Metal. Perception 10(2).

Leadbeater, D. 1998. The Development of Elliot Lake, “Uranium Capital of the World”: A background to the layoffs of 1990-1996. ELTAS Analysis #1A19, Laurentian University, Sudbury. 51 p.

Lewis, R.K. 2006. A history of radon 1470-1984. Proceedings of the 16th National Radon Meeting. Frankfort, Kentucky.

Nikiforuk, A. 1998. Echoes of the Atomic Age: Cancer kills fourteen aboriginal uranium workers. Calgary Herald, March 14

Uranium Mining, Native Resistance, and the Greener Path

by Winona LaDuke

Published on Saturday, February 7, 2009 by Orion Magazine

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4248

In a Dine Creation Story, the people were given a choice of two yellow powders. They chose the yellow dust of corn pollen, and were instructed to leave the other yellow powder-uranium-in the soil and never to dig it up. If it were taken from the ground, they were told, a great evil would come.

The evil came. Over one thousand uranium mines gouged the earth in the Dine Bikeyah, the land of the Navajo, during a thirty-year period beginning in the 1950s. It was the lethal nature of uranium mining that led the industry to the isolated lands of Native America. By the mid-1970s, there were 380 uranium leases on native land and only 4 on public or acquired lands. At that time, the industry and government were fully aware of the health impacts of uranium mining on workers, their families, and the land upon which their descendants would come to live. Unfortunately, few Navajo uranium miners were told of the risks. In the 1960s, the Department of Labor even provided the Kerr-McGee Corporation with support for hiring Navajo uranium miners, who were paid $1.62 an hour to work underground in the mine shafts with little or no ventilation.

All told, more than three thousand Navajos worked in uranium mines, often walking home in ore-covered clothes. The consequences were devastating. Thousands of uranium miners and their relatives lost their lives as a result of radioactive contamination. Many families are still seeking compensation. The Navajo Nation is still struggling to address the impact of abandoned uranium mines on the reservation, as well as the long-term health effects on both the miners and their communities, many of which suffer astronomical rates of cancer and birth defects.

As a college student, I worked for Navajo organizations, trying to inform their people about the uranium-mining industry and the large corporations-EXXON, Mobil, United Nuclear-that proposed to mine their lands. It was a humbling experience, seeing some of the richest corporations in the world faced by courageous peoples who fought for the two things that mattered to them more than money: their land and their identity. The Navajo people joined with many others across the country who felt that there was a much better way to make energy. In the end, the people did prevail-new mining proposals evaporated as tribal resistance and legal and administrative battles merged with economic forces. Eventually, contracts for uranium were canceled by utilities, which no longer sought to build unpopular nuclear power plants.

Now I feel like I am having very bad déjà vu-only this time nuclear power is seen as the answer to global climate destabilization. In 2005, the Navajo Nation passed a moratorium on uranium mining in its territory and traditional lands, which was followed by similar moratoria on Hopi and Havasupai lands, where mines are proposed adjacent to the Grand Canyon. "It is unconscionable to me that the federal government would consider allowing uranium mining to be restarted anywhere near the Navajo Nation when we are still suffering from previous mining activities," Joe Shirley Jr., Navajo Nation president, explained at a congressional hearing on opening uranium mines in the Grand Canyon area. To the north, the Lakota organization Owe Aku (Bring Back the Way) is an intervener in a Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearing to allow the Canadian corporation Cameco to expand its Crow Butte uranium mine, just over the Nebraska border from the reservation.

Read the rest of this article here: http://colorado-aim.blogspot.com/2009/02/winona-nails-it-again.html

Fort Chipewyan Cancer Rates Higher Than Expected: Report

Note/Background: Fort Chip is located in northeastern Alberta, Canada. It is mostly an aboriginal community that lies on the shore of Lake Athabasca. Uranium mining, gold mining and oil drilling has contaminated the water sources between Fort McMurray and Fort Chip for years. The tailing ponds have been knowingly leaking and sending toxic recipes into the waterways both surface and subsurface. There have been times that notices have been sent out about warnings about the fish and wildlife source being less than healthy and that the residents should not be eating animals from certain areas.

Over the last several years the Aboriginal leaders in Fort Chipewyan have been raising the issue of the number of their family members that seemed to be contracting cancer. The death toll to cancer appeared to be higher based on what they knew and the forms of cancer were rare. In 2002/03 Dr. John O’Connor of Fort Chip began speaking out about the issues related to the patients he was working with. He was later put before a great deal of professional challenges by the Alberta Government for raising the alarm on the issue and the Alberta Government insisted that these allegations were unfounded. The Aboriginal people of Fort Chip were forced to do some of their own studies relating to the water and the fish to try and make the government take the allegations seriously. They found higher levels of various toxins in the fish, water and soil than previously reported by the government.

The government is still advertising "jobs galore" in the Fort Chip area even though only 915 people live there permanently and it is very difficult to reach by land or water. Most of the jobs are in mining and oil. The government is also downplaying the degree to which the mining-related carcinogenic elements are impacting the higher than expected cancer rates. Sound familiar? (The background information re: Fort Chipewyan is from Metis Bare Facts blog, http://metisbarefacts.blogspot.com/)

Friday, February 6, 2009

The number of cancer cases in Fort Chipewyan is higher than expected, according to a report from Alberta Health Services released Friday.

Fifty-one cancers in 47 people were found in the remote community, 300km north of Fort McMurray, between 1995 and 2006, a dozen more than the 39 cancers that were expected, and the incidences of some cancers warrant more followup, the report said.

"The increased number of cases of biliary tract cancers, cancers in the blood and lymphatic system and cancers of unknown primary seen in the most recent six years (2001-2006) compared to the years 1995-2000 of the investigation warrant closer monitoring of cancer occurrences in Fort Chipewyan in the coming years," the report says.

"Further investigation is required to evaluate if there is a risk posed by living in Fort Chipewyan. This would be done by tracking a cohort of residents who have lived in the area within the past 20 to 30 years."

The increases are based on a very small number of cases, and could be due to chance or increased detection, the report says.

However, the possibility the increase is due to an increased risk in the community "cannot be ruled out," the report says, and it recommends analyzing other risk factors such as lifestyle, family history and occupational and environmental exposures.

Community leaders feel vindicated by the report, George Poitras of the Mikisew Cree First Nation in Fort Chipewyan said Friday.

"It's about time that we're getting these results confirming what we've been saying all along," he said. "But at the same time, it's kind of upsetting. Nobody wants to know our community is afflicted with cancer because we don't know who's going to be impacted next."

In 2006, Dr. John O'Connor, the physician in Fort Chipewyan, reported six suspected cases of cholangiocarcinomas, a rare form of bile duct cancer.

Of those six cases, two were confirmed in the study. Three more cases were other forms of cancer, and another case was not cancer.

The report found that the observed number of cholangiocarcinomas were "within the expected range" and there were lower than expected rates in some other types of cancer.

Study reviewed by independent experts

"We would all like … to get a black and white answer, something that's clear cut," Dr. Tony Fields, vice-president of the Cancer Corridor of Alberta Health Services, said at a news conference in Edmonton on Friday. "But we typically find ourselves in shades of grey."

The study, which was conducted by Dr. Yiqun Chen, was reviewed by independent experts from Australia, New Zealand and the United States, as well as two Canadian Aboriginal researchers. One of those researchers was recommended by the Nunee Health Board Society in Fort Chipewyan.

The review by the Alberta Health Services came after years of lobbying by health officials and community members in Fort Chipewyan.

Local people believe the oilsands developments located upstream from their community have caused higher-than-normal cancer rates in the community.

However, the methods used by the study also attracted controversy.

In November, community members rejected the findings of the study before they were released, because they felt researchers didn't spend enough time talking to people who live in Fort Chipewyan.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2009/02/06/edm-fort-chip-cancer.html