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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, @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.