Grand Canyon tourists exposed for years to radiation in museum building, safety manager says
For nearly two decades at the Grand Canyon, tourists, employees, and children on tours passed by three paint buckets stored in the National Park's museum collection building, unaware that they were being exposed to radiation.
Although federal officials learned last year that the 5-gallon containers were brimming with uranium ore, then removed the radioactive specimens, the park's safety director alleges nothing was done to warn park workers or the public that they might have been exposed to unsafe levels of radiation.
In a rogue email sent to all Park Service employees on Feb. 4, Elston "Swede" Stephenson — the safety, health and wellness manager — described the alleged cover-up as "a top management failure" and warned of possible health consequences.
[...] Stephenson said the containers were stored next to a taxidermy exhibit, where children on tours sometimes stopped for presentations, sitting next to uranium for 30 minutes or more. By his calculation, those children could have received radiation dosages in excess of federal safety standards within three seconds, and adults could have suffered dangerous exposure in less than a half-minute.
Also at NPR.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @05:19AM (4 children)
Yet, people worked there for years and didn't drop dead?
Sounds like being next to exploding reactor at Fukushima was safer. Almost like this was as alarmist as one could get, considering that Uranium is not very radioactive at all and all that there was in the bucket was ore.... people work in Uranium ore mines, you know, and the dangerous part is *radon* and *dust*, not the uranium ore that's in large pieces and often much higher quality.. I wonder what this alarmist considers dangerous dose when sitting next to granite counter top.. 5 minutes?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @05:35AM (1 child)
Just to reply to myself, FTFA,
So, an alarmist gets attention from a newspaper because "think of the children". His history of pointless escalations is kind of a warning to avoid this guy. I mean, the dude's child is carrying a Geiger counter! At first I thought that maybe it was some sciency child, but now it's probably coming from the panicky father.
Considering that you have uranium in ground water and food (because it's everywhere in the ground) ... yeah, fear the uranium in a bucket .... next up, asbestos ore exhibit in geology museum because it wasn't in a bomb-proof box?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 22 2019, @07:50PM
He's the freaking Safety manager. Sounding alarms IS THE JOB!
And also, falls are the #1 cause of workplace fatalities. Trying to prevent fatalities is also a rather important part of being a Safety manager.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @06:27AM
They did. And the others buried them in the museum's backyard. That's why they don't smell.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 22 2019, @07:46PM
Yet, people worked there for years and didn't drop dead?
That's not how cancer works.