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: 4, Informative) by Snotnose on Friday February 22 2019, @03:46AM (42 children)
This has been denounced on several news and web sites for almost a week now. No tourists were endangered, fly from LA to NYC and you got more radiation.
Seriously editors, can't you keep up?
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 22 2019, @03:55AM (16 children)
Fair enough, we'll dock their pay. Seriously though, failures to know everything under the sun can be taken care of in comments when they happen. No need to get your panties in a twist about the occasional dropped ball.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Snotnose on Friday February 22 2019, @03:59AM (13 children)
I really really hate to say this. But maybe read /. Or foxnews?
Honestly, this greenlight is such a fail I don't know what to say.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 22 2019, @04:12AM (4 children)
It happens. I mean it's not like we ran with two fake racism stories inside a month like most of the media but we still flub one now and then. That's when "haha, dumbasses" comments come in useful. Like now, the eds have been alerted and it'll be taken care of when one of them can manage the time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Friday February 22 2019, @04:16AM (3 children)
Understood. Forgiven.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @04:23AM
How magnanimous of you
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @10:59AM
Doesn't sound like it.
If you don't like the quality of anything on this site then put your time where your mouth is and volunteer! I could go on and on, but since you suggested using /. as a source I only have two words for you: Fuck Beta
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday February 22 2019, @08:27PM
We don't need your forgiveness asshole. If you feel that strongly about it, walk the walk buddy. Become an editor here, or just go back to /.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Friday February 22 2019, @04:14AM (3 children)
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @04:21AM
Yeah, instinctively I feel somebody is a poser, but I can't know for sure.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Friday February 22 2019, @04:24AM (1 child)
I know it, but I think TFA is fine.
"Grand Canyon tourists exposed for years to radiation in museum building, [stupid] safety manager says"
is not
"Grand Canyon tourists mutated by uranium-containing rocks"
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday February 23 2019, @12:56AM
...
*Cancels trip to Grand Canyon, and super-suit purchase order*
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday February 22 2019, @08:26PM (3 children)
We don't need anything from /., and Fox News has nothing to do with news. It's a Republican propaganda outlet pushing hate, fear, and few facts. Fox News has no place in any intelligent discussion about anything.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 23 2019, @03:07AM (2 children)
Neither does any cable news network by that standard. You get better odds of truth and unbiased reporting off a randomly selected YouTube video about the day's events than you do off any news network.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday February 23 2019, @09:26PM (1 child)
No, the standard is a news network. I will agree that journalism has some work to do. However, Fox News has far, far, far, far more in common with the Daily Show and that show with John Olliver, than it does with CNN, CBS, etc.
Remember, Fox News identifies itself as an entertainment network which is more or less abdicating all journalistic responsibilities. Even the assclowns like Tucker admit they are not journalists. Since they refuse to identify as a news network, and refuse to identify as journalists, they are not a newsworthy source for anything.
The day Fox News steps up and starts identifying as a news network, and participates in good faith in the journalism community, and subjects itself to those standards, I might take it more seriously. At the very least, I will agree to put in the same cesspool of shit along with the other news networks.
Until that time, it's a thinly veiled hate group.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 23 2019, @09:54PM
Good faith? In the journalism community? The same journalism community that managed two completely bullshit "Terrible racism by Trump supporters! Lynch them now!" stories in a month's time? That most still refuse to admit was a major ideologically driven fuck-up on their part? Nah, they're no better than anyone.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by sjames on Friday February 22 2019, @04:25AM
He is obviously the victim of a gamma irradiation accident. You'd be grumpy is your pants were that tight too.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday February 22 2019, @06:40PM
Radiation is indeed under the sun, so no harm no foul.... No, wait, we are around the sun and not under it, but it's nevertheless above me. Illogical! Illogical! *boom, and Soylent bursts in applause as Lawn's head explodes....*
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pipedwho on Friday February 22 2019, @04:00AM (15 children)
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.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @04:27AM (9 children)
What a wonderful world you must live in, where the employees get to keep their job for years.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 22 2019, @04:35AM (8 children)
We like to call it the real one. Most people leave their jobs by choice for pastures they perceive as greener before then but that's their choice. Most jobs can still be held for as long as you care to hold them, though the tech industry is generally not within the set of "most".
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @04:56AM (7 children)
Do all of them involve radioactive containers nearby? If so, those jobs may be actually a large scale scientific study.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday February 22 2019, @05:27AM (6 children)
If the container is made of a huge variety of organic material (at least, carbon 14), most stone (uranium and thorium plus decay products), most metals (same as stone plus some radioactive isotopes of various elemental constituents of the alloys), exposed to sunlight or cosmic rays (various radioactive isotopes are created by interaction with sunlight and cosmic rays, that's where all that carbon 14 and potassium 40 came from in the first place), dyed (carbon 14 and various other radioactive isotopes), has a biofilm on it (even if it didn't start with carbon 14, bacteria and algae will quickly add it to the surface) or any sort of indoors human-produced dust (carbon 14 and potassium 40), exposed to the various human-created radioactive waste sources of the past 75 years, then it is radioactive. Dose is what makes the poison, not the mere fact that something is radioactive.
So yes, if you work a job that has containers nearby, then you work at a job that has radioactive containers nearby. Sure, a bucket of uranium ore is somewhat more radioactive than most of these things, but you didn't make that distinction.
Incidentally, "study" indicates more than just doing stuff. Humans and their evolutionary ancestors have been exposed to radioactive materials for millions of years, including copious amounts of uranium ore (wasn't like there was some agency back then to keep it from happening). I doubt anybody was looking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @06:44AM (4 children)
If you can prove sunlight* can create radioactive isotopes you are in for a Nobel price.
*
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Friday February 22 2019, @08:02AM
Easy: Just accelerate the matter so it moves at sufficiently high relativistic speed towards the sun. Thanks to the Doppler effect, it will see the sunlight as hard gamma radiation, which, by making the speed high enough, can be made hard enough to cause nuclear reactions, which may result in activation of the nuclei.
Where's my Nobel prize? ;-)
Oh wait, you said Nobel price — damn, does it mean I have to pay now? ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 22 2019, @01:35PM (2 children)
[...]
But also including gamma rays from solar flares. That's sunlight too. I however was in error in that higher solar activity despite the increase in solar radiation results in lower production of atmospheric radioactive isotopes due to a decline in cosmic rays. Such isotopes would include carbon 14, beryllium 10, and chlorine 36, but not include potassium 40 which comes from the decay chain of uranium and thorium,
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 23 2019, @10:22AM (1 child)
Quite a good number of errors for somebody arguing from pedantic positions like "but you didn't make that distinction."
No, sunlight is light. You refer to gamma rays as radiation.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 23 2019, @01:54PM
And none of them were relevant. Nor quite that "good" a number either.
And those gamma rays. Not everything gets through the atmosphere. I notice the previous AC claimed sunlight was EM, now another AC is claiming something far more restricted (and does "light" include UV and IR BTW)?
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday February 22 2019, @08:55AM
Let me break the news to you: It's you who is a radioactive container. Run everyone... oh wait... run harder...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RandomFactor on Friday February 22 2019, @04:32AM (1 child)
Half life is like 4.6 billion years on 238. And this is just unrefined ore.
.
Not likely to see any impact there either I don't think.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by pipedwho on Friday February 22 2019, @05:51AM
Good point.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday February 22 2019, @04:47AM (1 child)
If they weren't breathing in uranium dust, they are probably fine.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @05:00PM
Hopefully they didn't think it was 'peanut butter' meth.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday February 22 2019, @07:44PM
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.
(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.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 22 2019, @12:56PM
"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."
so one flight from one end of usa to the other is by federal safety standardz ... dangerous?
wat about pilots and nurses ... errr doctors and stewardesses?
3 second uranium bucket visit equals the mentioned flight and the first is considered dangerous by law?
something doesnt smell right with this comparison, methinks...
(Score: 4, Informative) by eravnrekaree on Friday February 22 2019, @01:49PM
The paint bucket was emenating 400 millirem per hour.
A fully body CT scan, a high radiation exposure, is about 1000 millirem.
A chest x-ray is about 10 millirem.
Cross country plane trip is 2-5 millirem.
300 millirem annual background.
Paint buckets were 13.9 millirem/hour within a few feet of bucket.
280/hour with contact on outside of bucket.
800/hour on direct contact with ore.
Children like to play with things, so this is the greatest concern is they have touched it.
(Score: 2) by CZB on Friday February 22 2019, @04:34AM
It sure is annoying how the news articles don't give context for how much radiation that really is. (And how it wasn't all that harmful.)
(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.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday February 22 2019, @05:40PM
Proudly on display in a Spokane, Washington Museum is a transparent, deep-yellow set of dinner places which yellow is a Uranium compound, quite likely just likely just its Yellowcake ore.
Here and there about the older parts of Caltech's Pasadena Campus - the South side, towards San Marino, the two border between the two being overlooked by the Institute's Black and Dabney Houses - are some water fountains, festively decorated with tile.
Including _yellow_ tiles.
Quite likely Uranium dye remains widespread in the Industrialized world, quite likely as well in active use in the Developing one.
That's _quite_ deadly as Uranium emits Alpha Particles. That they are not at all penetrating leads each such particle to deposit all of its energy into very small volumes, all of those being in our skin.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]