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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @06:25AM (6 children)
Is that what the establishment media told you? I would be interested in hearing from someone with experience who, in an open and free setting like here, could comment on whether federal health and safety regulations and permissible exposures have been breached.
(Score: 4, Informative) by sjames on Friday February 22 2019, @07:45AM (5 children)
They have been, but that doesn't mean a whole lot. A single CT scan also exceeds federal standards by quite a bit. So does a cross country flight.
It's also notable that natural decay of uranium is an alpha decay, so it can't even get through the epidermis.
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Friday February 22 2019, @08:05AM
Indeed, typical alpha rays don't even get through a sheet of paper. And normally a few centimeters of air are sufficient shielding.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @03:39PM (1 child)
You can note anything you want, but we're not discussing recently-purified 238U. Any uranium ore that hasn't been purified also contains the whole chain of decay products, in equilibrium proportions corresponding to their half-lives.
In equilibrium, for every α decay from 238U to 234Th, there's 7 additional α decays and 6 β− decays down the chain to 206Pb.
(Even for 238U that has been purified in human history, and thus is far from equilibrium, the first two β− decays are going to happen essentially at once, since 234Th and 234Pa have t½ of 24 days and 70 seconds respectively.)
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday February 22 2019, @07:45PM
Sure, but there won't be very much of those in the sample since they do have a short half life. Note that beta isn't really that much of a problem either except at very high levels. Most of the decays in the chain are alpha. There are no gamma emissions in the decay chain to lead.A solid chunk of something that beta decays with a short to medium half-life might be a problem, but that's not the case here.
As a gauge of relative danger, tritium lights utilize the beta decay of tritium to power their glow and the thick plastic is enough to make them safe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @08:33PM (1 child)
But if you undergo a CT, the doctors obtain your informed consent that they are going to irradiate you.
Anyway, limits have been breached, so Mr Safety Guy has a valid point. It should not be hushed up by management.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday February 23 2019, @03:44AM
No, they don't. They just tell you you need a CT scan. If you panic about radiation, they will explain (truthfully) that it's very unlikely to do any harm and that the scan is necessary.
It's unclear how applicable the federal standards are here given that it's a very low level natural source of radiation. Note how there are not federal authorities scouring the sourthwestern desert areas for naturally radioactive rocks.
It's akin to calling the police to rat a friend out for not driving back to the store to return an extra penny he got back in change. There's a big difference between hushing something up and non-reporting of a non-event. Not driving 10 miles to return an extra penny you got in change somewhere is not a criminal conspiracy.