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posted by martyb on Friday February 22 2019, @03:42AM   Printer-friendly
from the public-sievert dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 22 2019, @07:44PM

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Friday February 22 2019, @07:44PM (#805269) Journal

    It's not the tourists that need to be worried, it's the employees that were there 8+ hours a day for years, and potentially sitting on top of the bins for a rest every few hours.

    Or much, much, worse: had to move the buckets around and inhaled/ingested any radioactive dust.

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