Article 16183 of alt.conspiracy:
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy,alt.activism,talk.environment,sci.environment,sci.med,sci.research,talk.politics.misc,misc.headlines,alt.censorship
Path: cbnewsl!jad
From: jad@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (John DiNardo)
Subject: Pt 1, RADIOACTIVE MEAT, MILK & PRODUCE: Supermarkets Selling Leukemia?
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Distribution: North America
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 12:04:08 GMT
Message-ID: <1992Oct7.120408.6949@cbnewsl.cb.att.com>
Followup-To: alt.conspiracy
Keywords: radioactive meat, milk & produce: supermarkets selling leukemia?
Lines: 147


     The following article is from IN THESE TIMES,   
     August 19 - September 1, 1987.  Subscriptions and back issues
     can be ordered by calling (312) 772-0100.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *  
One day in the spring of 1984, a teenager in eastern Oklahoma's
Muskogee County took his BB gun and went hunting at a pond by
Rabbit Hill Farm.  He shot a frog that had nine legs.

"Freddie the nine-legged-frog" is not the area's only animal anomaly.
People have shot rabbits that have two hearts. And some folks report
seeing a two-headed blackbird flying about. But not six-year-old
Lisa Girty, who was born without eyes or eye sockets. 

Such are signs of the times around Sequoyah Fuels, a uranium
processing plant located between the towns of Gore and Vian, and
within the boundaries of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, a
14-county area in the eastern part of the state. This facility is
owned by Kerr-McGee Corporation, and it is there where the late
Karen Silkwood's former employer turns powdered uranium ore into
uranium hexafluoride (UF6). 

Kerr-McGee makes UF6 by dissolving the powdered ore in an acidic
solution from which the most readily fissionable uranium is
chemically removed. Cylinders of UF6 are then trucked to nearby
Interstate 40 for delivery to more than 50 customers -- including
25 U.S. nuclear power plants, seven nations and the Department of
Energy. These nuclear clients either enrich the UF6 into nuclear
fuel, use it to make nuclear medicines or, in the case of the
Department of Energy, refine it into weapons grade material for
nuclear bombs. 

Kerr-McGee's plant, one of two of its kind in the country, is vital
to the U.S. nuclear industry and the war machine that the industry
symbiotically supports. Local critics say this strategic importance
has enabled Kerr-McGee to operate outside normal regulatory
controls -- with the end result being a contaminated environment,
and the area's high incidence of cancer deaths. 

In addition to making uranium hexafluoride, Kerr-McGee produces a
lot of toxic wastes. 

Until 1982, when the Nuclear Reguatory Commission (NRC) ordered
Kerr-McGee to install scrubbers on the plant's main smokestack, the
company regularly spewed radioactive debris into the air and onto
the surrounding neighborhood. And Kerr-McGee continues to dump
radioactive water into the Illinois River. 

But the waste that the company finds the most difficult to dispose
of is the solution that remains after the uranium is extracted.
Technically known as raffinate, this toxic sludge contains
radioactive elements like radium-226, thorium-230, and uranium, as
well as seventeen toxic and heavy metals including arsenic, cadmium,
mercury, lead, molybdenum and selenium. According to the NRC,
Kerr-McGee produces about 7.8 million gallons of raffinate each year.

In 1982, the NRC gave Kerr-McGee permission to begin injecting this
industrial waste into underlying sandstone rock formations. Five
million gallons were disposed of before intense public opposition
forced the company to seal off its well. 

Out of that public revolt was born Native Americans for a Clean
Environment (NACE).  Jesse Deer-in-Water, who -- with her husband
William, organized the initial opposition to the waste injections --
is NACE's chairperson. 

A former beautician, the 43-year-old Cherokee woman and mother of
five runs the organization out of her home in Vian. Deer-in-Water
scorns the NRC: "It's just out to save the nuclear industry."

THE FINAL SOLUTION:                                            
Much of Deer-in-Water's work these days centers on the company's
current solution to its liquid-waste problem. No longer allowed to
pump the radioactive, heavy-metal-laden raffinate into the ground,
Kerr-McGee sprays it on 15,000 acres of company farmland as
fertilizer. 

This is Kerr-McGee's recipe for industrial waste fertilizer:
add ammonia to the raffinate as it leaves the plant (the ammonia
combines with nitric acid already in the solution to create the
fertilizing agent, ammonium nitrate); filter the liquid that
settles on the top of the holding pools; collect some of the
remaining radioactive and heavy-metal particles using chemical and
centrifugal processes.  Presto. The Industrial waste is ready to be
spread on company-owned farms -- farms like Rabbit Hill whose
fields run off into the pond where Freddie-the-nine-legged-frog
once lived.

With the NRC's blessing, Kerr-McGee began examining the fertilizing
potential of its industrial sewage in 1973. In 1979, Kerr-McGee's
Director of Regulation and Control W.J. Shelly wrote to the
Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) regional office in Dallas:
  
   "The raffinate .... has been treated to reduce its radioactivity,
    and is applied to the soil as part of a waste disposal program
    licensed by the NRC."

Since then, the radioactive, heavy-metal-laden raffinate has been
renamed "ammonium nitrate fertilizer", and there is no talk of
"waste disposal programs" from farmer Kerr-McGee. 

On March 31, 1982, the NRC's Uranium Process Licensing Section
recommended that Kerr-McGee be given:
   "on a permanent basis ... permission to spray ... treated
    raffinate as fertilizer"
on company land. The NRC said that these raffinate applications
would neither pose an:
   "undue risk to public health" nor "have significant adverse
    environmental impacts."

"IT'S ALL A FICTION":                                           
The NRC based this conclusion on Kerr-McGee-supplied tests indicating
that the raffinate fertilizer, a concentration of uranium, thorium
and radium, is within Federal limits.   "It's all a fiction,"
says Dr. Rosalie Bertell, the Canadian epidemiologist who has made
a career out of studying populations living around nuclear
facilities (see IN THESE TIMES, Dec. 24, 1986). "Every exposure to
the population has a harmful effect." 

Bertell is currently working with Deer-in-Water on an epidemiologic
study of cancers, miscarriages and new allergies that have occurred
around the Kerr-McGee plant. Until Bertell examines the data, she
will not speculate as to whether the two hundred plus cancers that
the survey has documented are related to Kerr-McGee's operations.
But she comments that it "certainly looks extraordinary at first
glance."  Bertell has already examined the nine-legged-frog.
"It is conceivable that the raffinate could cause that," she says.

Kerr-McGee's Manager of Media Relations Annita Bridges says, when
asked about the nine-legged-frog:

   "Well, I've heard that story before. The number of legs keeps 
    increasing every time I hear it. I don't think anybody has ever
    seen that frog."

[JD: The front-page has a full-length photograph of a frog with
extra legs growing out of the area around the upper frontside of
of its body. I counted nine legs in all.]

   "If that frog exists, I am certain that there is no medical
    evidence that would link the uniqueness to the operations at 
    Sequoyah Fuels Corporation."

When the NRC approved Kerr-McGee's fertilizer program, it also
discussed the environmental impact of the seventeen toxic and heavy
metals found in the fertilizer. It said that Kerr-McGee's tests
show that "in some cases" the metals are found in concentrations
that exceed the National Academy of Science's recommended maximum
limits for irrigation water. The only one of those unspecified
elements that the NRC mentions, and seems repeatedly concerned
about, is molybdenum. According to Kerr-McGee-supplied figures, the
raffinate it sprayed in 1982 contained one hundred and seventy-eight
thousand percent more molybdenum than the maximum allowable
concentration for irrigation water. 

But Kerr-McGee's Bridges claims that the raffinate fertilizer is
harmless because 

   "the heavy metals and the radionuclides have been removed ....
    It is really not a waste product; it is a by-product."

She says that the "only difference" between a commercial fertilizer
and Kerr-McGee's "ammonium nitrate fertilizer" is that the latter
is produced by a "facility that is licensed by the NRC."

Kerr-McGee is also the only "farmer" who spreads fertilizer with
leased tank trucks whose doors read "Chemical Waste Disposal Division."

In giving its go-ahead to the fertilizer program, the NRC set
limits on how much raffinate could be applied to the soil. But
observers living near Kerr-McGee's raffinate-sprayed fields
suspect that the company spreads more fertilizer than allowed.

A RADIOACTIVE EXPLOSION: 
One of those who thinks that Kerr-McGee is over-dumping is Ed
Lammers, director of the Carlise Area Residents Association, a
group of people who live in the eighty-two houses within a two-mile
radius of the facility. Eighty-eight members of the association are
currently suing Kerr-McGee. On January 4, 1986, a uranium
hexafluoride cylinder exploded in the plant, leaving one worker
dead and sending the thirty-two remaining plant workers and sixty
Kerr-McGee 45 minutes to report to local emergency officials,
eventually closed Interstate 40. 

Lammers doesn't trust the NRC reports on how much Kerr-McGee is
dumping. And he and Deer-in-Water also doubt the veracity of the
laboratory tests done at Kerr-McGee Technical Center in Oklahoma
City that show that the raffinate is harmless. 

Last May, Deer-in-Water suggested to the NRC that
raffinate-fertilized plants be analyzed at someplace other than an
in-house laboratory. The NRC responded saying that Kerr-McGee's
environmental impact tests are valid because the company's
vegetation samples "are dried and properly prepared for analysis by
Oklahoma State University."

But Deer-in-Water and Lammers are as suspicious of Oklahoma State
University's testing program as they are of Kerr-McGee's. Says
Lammers:

   "Kerr-McGee hires their experts. Dr. Billy Tucker, an agronomist
    at Oklahoma State University, is their primary source on all 
    agricultural research. He has operated on Kerr-McGee research
    grants for years."

Kerr-McGee spokeswoman Bridges describes Tucker as "a consultant to
the fertilizer program." In response to charges of conflict of
interest, Tucker says:

   "The only way to overcome that criticism is if the Government
    would take over the expense of testing themselves."
As to the validity of his tests, he says:
    the fertilizer "has been tested since 1973. If it hasn't been 
    adequately tested, then I don't know how to adequately test it."

 [JD: Tucker is conveying the impression that the fertilizer is being
      adequately tested. But he is using carefully chosen words to state,  
      with semantical strictness, just the opposite -- that he is NOT   
      sure that he knows how to adequately test the fertilizer.  
      This semantically honest statement technically clears his 
      implied meaning of any dishonest inferences.]

Pat Costner, the Deputy Director of Greenpeace's National Toxics
Campaign and a former industrial chemist for Shell, began
investigating Kerr-McGee's operations in 1984 when she worked for
the National Water Center of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. She says:

   "Kerr-McGee's experimental program for proving the harmlessness
    of their raffinate-spraying program is a joke. It is profoundly
    inadequate. I've looked at NRC and Kerr-McGee data, and it is 
    so disparate and it disagrees with itself so frequently that it
    doesn't prove anything."

INTO THE HUMAN FOOD CHAIN:
Costner is particularly worried about Kerr-McGee's budding cattle
operation, and the possibility that raffinate-fed beef might soon
be making its way to supermarket meat counters. The NRC apparently
had similar concerns when it said in 1982:

   "The most significant potential impact of using raffinate as a
    fertilizer for forage production is the introduction of toxic 
    materials into the human food chain. Excessive concentrations 
    of the various species of heavy metals present in raffinate can
    be toxic to plants and/or animals."

Kerr-McGee is selling its raffinate-fertilized hay to local farmers
at what it costs to bale the hay. They also give it away. According
to an Associated Press report, last March the company sent the
Navaho Tribal Council at Fort Wingate, New Mexico a gift shipment 
of 300 tons of raffinate-fertilized hay to help the tribe through 
a hard winter. Kerr-McGee spokesperson Rick Pereles told 
the Associated Press:

   "Although it hasn't been a banner year for the company, 
    Kerr-McGee decided to help because of our longstanding 
    relationship with the Navahos, because of mining and oil and
    gas leases in that area."

Kerr-McGee's Quivira Mining Company mines and mills uranium at
Church Rock and Ambrosia Lake, New Mexico. 
Deer-in-Water describes the gift as:

   "a great tax write-off. The tribal council accepted the hay 
    because they have the philosophy that since they have uranium
    mine tailings and are already exposed to so much radioactivity,
    what is a little more."


In 1984, The New England Journal of Medicine reported that Quivira
miners, many of whom are Navaho, have higher than normal lung cancer
rates. Other reports have indicated that animals and plants in the
area have elevated levels of molybdenum and selenium. These
concentrations of heavy metals have contributed to instances of
molybdenosis (molybdenum poisoning) and selenosis (selenium poisoning)
in the animals. Consequently, local ranchers were warned not to
exclusively eat their own beef, since that would significantly
increase their risk of getting cancer.

AN F.D.A. COVER-UP?:
Barbara Synar and her husband John live in Warner, eight miles from
the Sequoyah Fuels facility. They own a 900-acre rance that adjoins
the Rabbit Hill Farm. In 1982, Barbara Synar helped organize the
Warner Area Residents, a group that opposes the raffinate spraying.
In March, 1986, the Synars asked the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) to investigate. Ramona Fache of the FDA's Tulsa office took
samples of raffinate-treated hay which John Synar had bought from
Kerr-McGee, and said that she would get them tested. According to
Barbara Synar, Fache spent a lot of time on the case, but was then
told by her superiors to "lay off Kerr-McGee", since the fertilizer
program was an NRC concern. The Synars have heard nothing from the
FDA since then.  Synar says:

   "People told us not to call her because she could lose her job
    over this whole thing. This happens everywhere you turn. Every 
    time you talk to somebody, they get told to lay off the issue
    of Kerr-McGee."

When contacted by IN THESE TIMES, Fache, now working in the FDA's
Dallas district office, declined to speak on or off the record,
saying that she didn't want to jeopardize her job. Fache referred
all questions to the FDA's Director of Investigations in Dallas,
Ted Rotto. Asked whether or not the FDA had tested Kerr-McGee's
raffinate-fertilized hay, Rotto answered:

   "Yes, we have run some tests up there, but that was so long ago
    that I don't remember. There would be records somewhere."

The FDA is not the only regulatory body that has failed to respond
to requests by area residents for help. Deer-in-Water, Lammers and
Synar mention several state and federal agencies that declined to
go up against Kerr-McGee. 

In Oklahoma, Kerr-McGee and politics are synonymous. According to
Richard Rashke in THE KILLING OF KAREN SILKWOOD, in 1959, the late
Senator Robert F. Kerr (D.-Oklahoma) arranged for Kerr-McGee to sell
to the Atomic Energy Commission (later to become the NRC) three
hundred million dollars worth of uranium. His grandson, Robert F.
Kerr III, is currently the Lieutenant-Governor of Oklahoma. 
But it is the Oklahoma Water Resources Board "where people speculate
that Kerr-McGee gets the most pull politically," says Rhonda Haraway,
a reporter for the Southwest Times Record in Fort Smith, Arkansas.
The late senator's son and the present lieutenant-governor's father,
Robert F. Kerr Jr, is a major Kerr-McGee shareholder and sits on
the company's board of directors. He also is on the Water Resources
Board that regulates Kerr-McGee's discharge of radioactive waste 
water into the Illinois River, one of Oklahoma's designated "wild 
and scenic" rivers. 

WASTE DOWN THE RIVER:
According to Kerr-McGee records, the company annually dumps eleven
thousand pounds of uranium into the Illinois River. But local
residents believe that the actual amount dumped is MUCH higher.
The company operates with two discharge permits, one of which is
issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In 1984 and
1985, the EPA cited Kerr-McGee with twenty-one dumping violations.
(Figures do not exist for 1986 because the facility was closed due
to the uranium hexafluoride explosion.)

The NRC also found problems with the river dumping, and wrote in a
report:

   "Accumulation of uranium in the sediment or soil along the 
    combination stream [the ditch that carries the waste to the
    river] has reached a significant level; therefore, [NRC] staff
    has requested Sequoyah Fuels to propose a better method of 
    transference of the waste from the facility to the river."

Kerr-McGee's second dumping permit is issued by the Oklahoma Water
Resources Board. The board's guidelines originally did not require
that it regulate radioactive waste, but that had changed by 1982
when the company's state dumping permit expired.

For the past five years, Kerr-McGee has discharged its radioactive
water into the Illinois River through a legal loophole. Oklahoma
law states that if the Water Resources Board fails to renew a permit
before it expires, the company involved is allowed to dump at the
old levels until the board acts. So in 1982 when the Water Resources
Board did not renew Kerr-McGee's permit, the company could legally
discharge its radioactive water as usual.

Robert F. Kerr was named to the Water Resources Board that same
year. Kerr-McGee says that Kerr doesn't take part in board decisions
involving the company, yet Oklahoma law allows a board member to
vote on permits affecting his business concerns if that individual
believes that he can give the matter "a fair and impartial hearing."
In the case of Sequoyah Fuels, Kerr's actions have yet to be tested
since over the past five years no permit has been voted on.

   "What it says to me is that Kerr-McGee and the Water Resources 
    Board appear to be acting in concert,"

says Kathy Carter-White, the attorney for NACE. Evidence of this
conclusion is a Jan. 24, 1984 Water Resources Board internal
memorandum addressed to the board's chief of water quality that
acknowledges dumping violations.  The note says:

   "An enforcement action is in progress. If we draft up a permit
    before the enforcement request is satisfied, we would put the
    permittee under more instant violations."

Late last year, the board finally moved to control Kerr-McGee's
discharge of radioactive waste into the river and set a December 9th
date for a public hearing on the company's disposal methods. But
before they could take place, Kerr-McGee obtained an injunction to
stop the hearings. The company argued that the NRC, not the Water
Resources Board, was the government body responsible for regulating
uranium dumping.

Early in July, a district court judge ruled that the Water Resources
Board did have jurisdiction over Kerr-McGee's dumping. The company
then appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which on July 21st,
upheld the lower court ruling, saying that the company would have
to get a permit from the Water Resources Board both to dump plant
waste into the Illinois River and to dump its raffinate fertilizer
on the ground.

On August 31st, the Wate Resources Board will hold a public hearing
on Kerr-McGee's proposal practices. NACE, Carlisle Area Residents
Association and Warner Area Residents are busy preparing for the
hearings. NACE's attorney Carter-White will present the board with
thirty-one arguments against approving a dumping permit. Greenpeace's
Costner will ask for a peer review of all Kerr-McGee test data.
The Warner Area Residents have a veterinarian who will testify
about heavy-metal poisoning causing kidney failure in pets that
wandered onto raffinate-sprayed property. He will also document the
sudden appearance of mutations in a local herd of pure-bred cattle.

Carter-White believes that the permit proposed by the Water Resources
Board will

   "be an improvement."     She says:
   "The discharges will be considerably less than would have 
    occurred if citizens hadn't intervened. Yet it is still not 
    adequate. The board will continue to allow Sequoyah Fuels to 
    dump toxic, mutagenic, carcinogenic and radioactive wastes into
    the river. The proposed permit allows Kerr-McGee to dump up to
    five hundred and fifty-two thousand, nine hundred and seventy-five
    pounds of uranium into the Illinois River per year -- as long as
    the discharge, when tested in the laboratory, does not kill
    an excessive number of flathead minnows."
                         (end of report)
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

        If you believe that American consumers have a right to know if
        the food and milk they are ingesting is giving them leukemia and 
        other cancers, please assist in disseminating this story by posting
        it to other bulletin boards and by posting hardcopies in public
        places, both on and off campus.

              John DiNardo