最新杏吧原创

This summer, more than 300 truckloads of radioactive dirt have been hauled away from the bank of Coldwater Creek near Jana Elementary in north 最新杏吧原创 County.

Meanwhile, activists are working to push across the finish line a bill pending in Congress that would compensate area residents with illnesses tied to the bomb development effort.

As cleanup and compensation efforts continue, this is a look at what happened over the past 82 years, how and where it happened, and what it means today.

Not long after the United States was drawn into World War II in 1941, 最新杏吧原创-based Mallinckrodt became a key processor of uranium ore for the Manhattan Project, which created the first atomic weapons. In December 1942, at the University of Chicago, scientists produced the first nuclear reaction; all of the uranium used in that experiment was from Mallinckrodt.

For 24 years, Mallinckrodt produced more than 100,000 tons of purified natural uranium materials at a location north of downtown and later in Weldon Spring. More than 3,300 employees were involved in the process, but they knew little at the time about the dangers involved.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 know what the stuff is, but they tell me it鈥檚 radioactive, so it must be for radios,鈥澛爋ne worker reportedly said at the time, according to an .

The report also claimed, citing a director of radiation safety at Mallinckrodt, that workers sometimes handled radioactive materials and waste with their bare hands.

Radioactive contamination would spread around the 最新杏吧原创 area.

A look at how it happened:

Where in 最新杏吧原创 did workers process radioactive material?

The government contracted private firms to mill and refine uranium ore for the Manhattan Project. At Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in the Near North Riverfront neighborhood, workers processed a mysterious substance known as uranium.

Three months after the refining operation began in 1942, it was producing a ton of pure uranium oxide per day. The work on North Second Street continued until 1957. The north 最新杏吧原创 location is still a Mallinckrodt plant, but no longer handles uranium.听

In 1957, the Atomic Energy Commission opened a plant in Weldon Spring and Mallinckrodt moved its uranium processing there until 1966, when the company stopped radioactive processing in the 最新杏吧原创 area.听The government initially made explosives at the plant for four years ending in 1945, so the site was already contaminated with conventional explosive waste.

The Mallinckrodt plant converted processed uranium ore concentrates to pure uranium trioxide, intermediate compounds and uranium metal.

Radioactive waste contaminated the area, including a large quarry that eventually became a Superfund cleanup site in 1987. The rest of the Weldon Spring site was added to the Superfund site two years later.

A 75-foot-tall mound covered in rock serves as a permanent disposal cell for much of the waste. The Environmental Protection Agency has completed cleanup at the site with the exception of long-term groundwater restoration.

Why was radioactive waste stored near the 最新杏吧原创 airport?

In 1946, the federal government acquired a 21.74-acre property near the airport and began dumping radioactive wastes there. The site would later be known as the 最新杏吧原创 Airport Site, or SLAPS.

From 1948 to 1952, Mallinckrodt trucked much of the waste debris from its site north of downtown to the airport site.

In 1954, 60 tons of captured Japanese uranium wastes were brought to the airport site.

A 1965 survey by the Atomic Energy Commission found about 121,000 tons of uranium refinery residues and contaminated material there.

When Mallinckrodt stopped processing uranium in the 最新杏吧原创 area in 1966, the Atomic Energy Commission leveled the buildings on the airport site and buried them. It moved waste to a nearby site, 9200 Latty Avenue in Bridgeton.

In 1997, the Department of Energy began digging up waste from both sites and shipping it to Utah, with remediation of the source area at the airport site completed in 2007 and the Latty Avenue site in 2013.

The EPA continues to test and gather information on the soil and groundwater.

How did Coldwater Creek become contaminated with radioactive waste?

Coldwater Creek is adjacent to the airport site where radioactive waste was stored at the airport site. It聽flows through 最新杏吧原创 County north to the Missouri River, meeting it close to Fort Belle Fontaine County Park.听

An internal Mallinckrodt memo from 1949 showed the company was storing highly radioactive residue called K-65 in deteriorating steel drums at the airport site near Coldwater Creek, according to a report from The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press.

The material was so dangerous, the memo said, that Mallinckrodt couldn鈥檛 simply put it in new containers because the danger it posed to workers. The radioactive waste, in rusty barrels, sat near the creek until the mid-1960s, when another company moved waste to the Latty Avenue site. Thus, Coldwater Creek was heavily contaminated.听

Radioactive material was first confirmed to be present in and around Coldwater Creek , when a seven-part Post-Dispatch report spotlighted the issue. Congress soon placed the airport site and the Latty Avenue sites on a priority list for environmental cleanup.

In 1989, the state鈥檚 first health study of the area surrounding the airport waste sites showed eight cases of cancer in residents of Nyflot Avenue that could be linked to radiation exposure. Subsequent studies did not find conclusive evidence of a public health threat.

In 2015, testing by the Army Corps of Engineers found 鈥渓ow-level鈥� radioactive contamination at residential properties along Coldwater Creek.

Federal investigators determined that waste contaminated Coldwater Creek for 14 miles.

Why was radioactive waste moved to West Lake Landfill?

In 1973, a construction firm mixed about 8,700 tons of barium sulfate residue containing a low concentration of uranium with about 39,000 tons of dirt at the Latty Avenue site and dumped it at West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton.

The landfill was declared an EPA Superfund site in 1990, and the agency has recently said the landfill does not pose a public threat.

Federal officials plan to remove some of the radioactive material at the landfill and cap the rest.

Meanwhile, there are concerns that an underground fire at an adjacent landfill could spread to West Lake.

The waste sits a few hundred yards from an adjacent landfill that has dealt with an underground smolder for more than a decade.

That fire, called a 鈥渟ubsurface smoldering event鈥� by officials, has come within hundreds of yards of known radioactive contamination but has been slowed by an intricate cooling system of pipes that run into the landfill.

Given the types of radioactive material at the landfill, temperatures from a fire would have to be over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit to turn them into more mobile liquids or gases, said Bob Skinner, a former radioactive waste specialist at the Idaho National Laboratory.

What happened to contaminate a Hematite plant with radioactive waste?

In Hematite in Jefferson County, a聽Mallinckrodt plant聽refined uranium from 1956 to 1974 into high-enriched nuclear fuel for the Navy鈥檚 nuclear submarine program and other reactor programs.

From 1974 until its 2001 closure, it manufactured nuclear fuel rods for commercial power plants. Workers buried radioactive waste in pits.

By 2018, a $200 million cleanup was completed and the site was released for unrestricted use.

How did two Metro East factories become contaminated with radioactive material?

In Granite City, General Steel Castings Corp., under orders from Mallinckrodt, X-rayed uranium ingots in the Betatron Building to detect metallurgical flaws from 1958-1966. The site was remediated twice, after the work was completed and again after it was surveyed in 1989.

In nearby Madison, Dow Metal Products, a division of Dow Chemical Co., straightened uranium rods for Mallinckrodt from 1958-1962. In 1989, a survey of the Dow buildings found radioactive contamination in dust on overhead surfaces, including roof beams, at the facility.听聽

What are the health impacts of the radiation in the area?

A 2019 federal investigation confirmed that people exposed to the contaminated Coldwater Creek in north 最新杏吧原创 County from the 1960s to the 1990s may have an increased risk of developing bone cancer, lung cancer and leukemia.听A 2014 state report showed high rates of leukemia, breast, colon and other cancers in areas surrounding the creek.

Officials have estimated that as many 80,000 people have been sickened from exposure to radioactive or other harmful materials related to the area's Manhattan Project efforts.

Near the Weldon Spring site, state officials found the number of leukemia deaths for residents older than 65 rated significantly higher than average. But the report, assailed by some community members, concluded residents of St. Charles County were not at higher risk of developing leukemia due to radioactive waste.

An effort to expand an existing federally funded nuclear radiation exposure survivor program covers most of north 最新杏吧原创 County, the north riverfront area of 最新杏吧原创 and a large swath of St. Charles County anchored by Weldon Spring.

Information in this report was obtained from Post-Dispatch and Associated Press reports.