MOST RADIOACTIVE PLACE ON EARTH

The most toxic site on the planet, radioactively speaking, is the
HANFORD NUCLEAR SITE, WASHINGTON STATE, USA

“Like a Science Fiction Movie”: Whistleblowers speak out.

Bizarre deaths after radiation exposure at US nuclear site — My whole family’s dead; Mom eaten up by tumors everywhere, could see them growing; Dad had masses suddenly erupt all over; Brother died at birth — Incredible number of colleagues killed by cancer, 2-3% alive

Sept. 17, 2014: Investigators expose a continuing pattern… If you work  [at Hanford] and speak up about safety concerns, watch out. Chances are you’ll be met with harassment, intimidation, and the end of your career… Hanford’s tank farms [hold] the deadliest substances on Earth… Shelly Doss: “If you just ignore [the rules]… you risk contaminating the person… contaminating the environment… These were blatant violations”… Managers [said] she was to ignore that and 5 other major violations… “They were very angry because they’d been getting away with it.”… After 23 years… Shelly Doss was… fired… In the last year, they fired… 2 high-profile Hanford managers who blew the whistle.

Trisha Pritikin, Hanford downwinder, interview by TalkingStickTV
(Watch the highly informative 50-minute interview here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwdkH0iPBls&index=1&list=PLuUn6Z0SzGObRGSzIDz9SQUtRBVcqHSWG ):

Part I at 0:15 in — My brother… is one of the many infants who died shortly after birth in what is now known to be the Hanford downwind area. 
Part 2 at 12:30 in –My father died of thyroid cancer 3 years ago. He was [a nuclear safety engineer] at Hanford who believed that there was nothing wrong there… [I have severe thyroid disease and] my mother had thyroid disease. There’s no history of thyroid disease anywhere in our family… My whole family’s dead now… My mother died this March of rapidly metastatic malignant melanoma… just took over her body. It killed her in 6 weeks. I’m not saying this to evoke pity [but] to educate people. 
Part 3 at 1:00 in — The most logical reason I’ve heard for why this information on radiation… wasn’t shared with the public is liability. The government doesn’t want to deal with people’s health problems caused by the involuntary exposures.  
Part 4 at 1:30 in — [My dad] didn’t want to admit that he had thyroid problems, because he was a nuclear engineer and [said] nothing was wrong with Hanford… It erupted almost overnight into masses [and] went all over his body… Then he suddenly had 20 masses in his lungs. I thought, ‘This is like a science fiction movie,’ because it’s moving much faster than cancer ever moves…

[He received] a letter from the Dept. of Energy… saying in response to his letter asking whether he had ever been a subject of human radiation experiment, yes he had been. 

Part 4 at 6:30 in — In March this happens again… [My mom's] whole body is getting eaten up by malignant melanoma. There are tumors everywhere, they are just growing all over. You could see them growing in her stomach, it was surreal. These two people died deaths which are very bizarre; you don’t see this in normal life. It’s like you take a science fiction movie — look at this person getting eaten up… If I simply state the facts, [the American Nuclear Society and DOE] accuse me of being emotional and over-involved… They say thyroid cancer’s a slow-moving disease and people don’t die. 
Part 5 at 1:00 in — Last Christmas my mother was still alive… I was going to Oak Ridge for a meeting and my mom said you could visit our old friends… she listed 6 couples… she just kept saying, ‘No, they’re dead. No that’s right, they died… Well, they’re all dead, I guess you don’t have to visit any of them.’
 She didn’t think it remarkable that they’re all dead… There’s this incredible number of my parents’ colleagues who are dead from cancer… They just didn’t want to put 2 + 2 together and say, ‘Everybody’s dead from cancer, isn’t that weird?’
Yes, it is weird –and now you are both dead of cancer, mom and dad… just the strangest, fast-moving cancers.
If you could put all my parents friends together would be just 2% to 3% of them alive still, it is so amazing.  

Part 5 at 13:00 in — No [family] history of thyroid disease yet 4 of 4 members of my family developed [it]… There are lots of families with multiple incidence.

                   Hanford - Lethal and Leaking Part 1

                          Lethal and Leaking Part 2

The most contaminated piece of real estate in the Western Hemisphere is a site along the Columbia River in Hanford, Washington that the Department of Energy says it has been trying to clean up for 16 years and has accomplished virtually nothing..

PHYSICIANS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY ATTEMPT TO EXPLAIN HOW THIS HAPPENED  

Hanford's radioactive and toxic wastes pose serious health and environmental threats. They are a legacy of international tension and nuclear weapons production in the last century. The challenge of Hanford today is a tapestry woven from this complex history.

The tapestry is colored by four principal threads that still interfere with cleanup efforts.  

~The first thread is the extreme secrecy and isolation of this government project starting in 1943 in the midst of World War II. In most cases the Hanford workers did not know that their job was making the plutonium for atomic bombs until the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Security remained very tight during the decades of the Cold War. The government did not reveal a number of significant health-related events until forced to do so in the late 1980s by citizen exercise of the Freedom of Information Act. Although highly sophisticated radiation monitoring was performed throughout the history of Hanford, the government did not tell the public the details, repeatedly assuring them that everything was safe.  

~A second thread is the Hanford workers' pride in their work and a strong sense of community that tolerated no criticism from insiders who knew of dangers or safety violations. Rejection, isolation and denial still meet whistleblowers' efforts, and local pride still clamors for "production" jobs at Hanford.  

~The third thread is the slowly evolving understanding of radiobiology and its acceptance by political figures.
For example, initial hopes that the soil would hold wastes from leaching into the groundwater were eventually proven wrong.
The Chernobyl disaster alerted the public that serious accidents could occur at Hanford.
The resulting contamination of the Columbia and its basin would affect the population of the entire Northwest.

Increasing understanding of the effects of relatively low level radiation on DNA and the long lag time before such radiation effects are apparent in humans and animals has further focused public desire to safely contain the highly toxic nuclear wastes at Hanford.  

~The fourth thread is the tangled, often incestuous relationship between the US Government as represented by its local agency, the Department of Energy (DOE), and the large corporations doing most of the contracted work at Hanford.
Often the government awarded contracts on bids involving lowest cost estimates that have led to disappointing progress, unsafe procedures and contractor turnover.

General Electric followed Dupont, then Atlantic Richfield (ARCO), then Rockwell, then Westinghouse, and currently Fluor Daniel and Bechtel.

Large bonuses for reaching or exceeding projected volumes of production of plutonium for our warheads lured corporations into giving a very low priority to safety measures and control of radioactive waste.
The termination in 2000 of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. for mammoth estimated cost increases for glassification (vitrification) of high level wastes is but the latest example of Hanford's contractor problems.  

By the mid-1980s, the Freedom of Information Act allowed an alerted public to review Hanford documents from the 1940s and 1950s.

These documents revealed that incredible contamination of the environment and exposure of large numbers of citizens to dangerous amounts of radioactive nuclides had occurred in Hanford's earlier years.

By 1957 eight plutonium production reactors dumped a daily average of 50,000 curies of radioactive material into the Columbia.

Perhaps the most dramatic of these events was the "Green Run" in December 1949, when 8,000 curies of iodine-131 were intentionally released from ("green") nuclear fuel with only a short cooling period.

This secret release was part of a US intelligence effort to develop capability for detecting Russian plutonium production. 
Although the plume covered an area of 200 by 40 miles, no warnings were given and no follow-up of area residents was conducted.
By comparison, only 15 -24 curies of iodine-131 were released at Three Mile Island.   

The true situation at Hanford remained hidden from the public.
The community faith in "good jobs, good pay, and a good cause" had long fostered an emphasis on production and a neglect of safety.

Anyone critical could expect immediate and crushing reprisal from the "Hanford community" and the corporations.
Only after a particularly brave inspector and whistleblower leaked information to the press and a very revealing series of expose articles appeared in the newspapers did any meaningful changes occur.
 The contractor, Rockwell, like the US government before it, kept secret the reports of many breaches and breakdowns, and the Department of Energy failed to maintain the strict oversight required of it by law.

THEY KNEW!
THEY KNEW AND THEY HID THE TRUTH AS THOUSANDS DIED OVER THE MANY DECADES, PEOPLE WHO COULD HAVE BEEN SAVED! 

Neural tube birth defects occur at 400% the national rate near Hanford nuclear site.

The Hanford nuclear site occupies a vast area of land near this region.


Since 2010, more than 30 babies have been diagnosed with anencephaly, a "nightmarish neural tube defect in which the fetus does not develop a forebrain, and the rest of the brain is not covered by skin or bone."

The anencephaly cases are occurring in a three-county area in central Washington, including Yakima, Benton and Franklin. 

This particular region is also known for being a major agricultural hub, producing cherries, grapes, apples, potatoes and wheat, all cultivated with pesticides containing nitrates. 
 In addition to anencephaly, a rising number of pregnant women in this particular region have been affected by spina bifida, a birth defect in which the neural tube fails to close properly, leaving the brain and spine exposed.

Currently, central Washington is seeing 8.7 cases of anencephaly per 10,000 births, compared with the national average of only 2.1 cases per the same sample population.

RAREST CANCERS ARE NOT RARE HERE!
IN THIS AREA OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, THERE HAS BEEN AN INCREASE IN THE RAREST FORMS OF CANCER FROM 400 TO 1600+ PER YEAR, AND THAT 400 PER YEAR WAS EXTREMELY HIGH!  
WHY SUCH A SUDDEN INCREASE? 
HANFORD PLUS THE ADDED RADIATION IN PLUMES ARRIVING FROM FUKUSHIMA, PERHAPS? 
THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST IS ABSOLUTELY BOMBARDED WITH RADIATION...IT HAS BEEN FOUND IN WATER, AIR, SOIL, ANIMALS, VEGETABLES, AND HUMANS IN VERY HIGH AMOUNTS.


ONE SURVIVOR WRITES:
Many died from the first FUKUSHIMA wave.
Many more are soon to die from waiting too long. I was almost dead and well into stage 4 when they finally got to me, even knowing about it EARLY!
http://s1273.photobucket.com/user/CesiumSky/library/Cesium%20Sky/ELEmentSky/Garden%20Of%20ELEden?sort=6&page=1  
HIS PHOTOS OF HIS SURGERIES ARE ON PAGE 2 OF THE ABOVE LINK.


MUCH MORE FROM AROUND THE WEB:
(IF THESE LINKS FAIL, PLEASE LET ME KNOW)


They've been keeping it wrapped up from the get-go:
http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/utah_today/radiationdeathanddeception.html


Bone breaks -could there be a connection to:
https://www.google.com/patents/US3940324


Leader of Fukushima Study: “Intense exposure” headed toward US west coast; Plume traveling very fast via oceanic jet — “High concentrations” to impact California coastal areas; Prolonged period of radioactive upwelling expected THIS MONTH! 

                                                       SEPTEMBER, 2014


https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=8vcUGfoiqkI#t=2446
Presentation by Dr. Vincent Rossi, oceanographer at the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems, affiliated with the Spanish National Research Council, Published on May 26, 2014
Pacific Northwest

Slide at 49:30 in — Northern shelves: jet-like advection of the surface plume explain the short but intense exposure.  
42:20 in — You can see that it is not a homogenous advection, you’ve got this jet here. This jet was consistent across the ensembles, and it’s been observed also in other studies. It advected the plume faster, at about 40°N [latitude].  
49:30 in — The surface plume is traveling very fast toward the coast of the US.
50:45 in — The northern shelf, we have the jet-like convection that creates the first impact with elevated concentrations. 

California

Slide at 49:30 in — Strong Ekman divergence delay the arrival of the surface plume. but mode water formation and subsurface 3D pathways explained the prolonged moderated exposure. 
50:00 in — [Subsurface] water created between 2011 and 2014, that will travel and reemerge later off the coast of California… in 2021… We can see this color here of high concentration… Persistent upwelling… sources its water exactly at this [subsurface plume's] depth… this upwelling will source this water from the contaminated water and release this water into the shelf area for a while, for the longer term… They will have longer exposure because of this sinking contaminated water that went  across… and then comes up about 10 years later. 
58:30 in — I averaged the concentration over the shelf… It doesn’t mean you’d measure it right on the coast, on the beach. I took 150 kilometers along the coast. Southern California for instance it might have already reached the coastal area, essentially because of the upwelling, it might have already reached the outer shelf. I don’t know if they’re doing any kind of measurement.
Watch the full presentation here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=8vcUGfoiqkI#t=2446

“We see radiation from Fukushima in soils in Southern California, especially our desert regions” — High concentrations in seaweed prevented harvest this year — Also found in cattle and chicken feed 


(The first few minutes is an interview with Atyia Martin, Director of the Office of Public Health Preparedness at the Boston Public Health Commission)

At 6:15 into interview...
Dr. Sherridan Ross, medical doctor, retired professor at University of California – Irvine, member of the Board of Directors at The Compton Community Organic Garden: Over here we’ve done a lot of things to make sure that our food supply has been safe, but it’s also cost us quite a bit. What we’d usually do is harvest a lot of the seaweed for places such as the Central Valley where a lot of our root crops, and also our lettuce and things come from. But because of the high concentration of radiation that’s in the seaweed, we haven’t been able to do that this year. We try to use the coast of California — initially we’d harvest tons of it, because it’s a renewable source, it’s very good, good for sucking up radiation and stuff that’s in the soil — that was our ‘out’.

We do see the radiation from Fukushima in the soils in Southern California, especially in our desert regions. For some reason we’re seeing a lot of that, more prevalent — even though it is in small amounts, it’s still there. […] That’s one of the things that’s been happening with the bioengineering of foods, to get it out of the food source. We’ve been also seeing it in small amounts in a lot of the food sources that we give to our cattle and to our chickens. So these are the things that we’ve been taking note of and things that we’ve been trying to monitor and make sure that it doesn’t get to a higher level within our food sources.

Full interview available <HERE>.

 

IN ADDITION TO ALL THIS, IT APPEARS THE FLESH;EATING BACTERIA FROM THE GULF OF MEXICO HAS REACHED THE PACIFIC COAST.    
 

WKRG, http://www.wkrg.com/story/23882016/auburn-researcher-says-tar-balls-are-magnets-for-bacteria
Nov. 5, 2013: [Doctor Cova Arias, professor of aquatic microbiology at Auburn University and vibrio vulnificus expert] set out to discover if vibrio were present in tar balls. She was highly surprised by what she found as she studied tar on the Alabama and Mississippi coasts. “What was clear to us was that the tar balls contain a lot of vibrio vulnificus,” said Arias. [...] “In general, (the tar balls) are like a magnet for bacteria,” said Arias. [...] “What we also found was in water, the numbers were about ten times higher than the numbers that have reported before from that area,” said Arias. So the water alone had ten times as much vibrio as before the oil spill [...] Doctors who fight infectious diseases, though, say the high levels of vibrio in and around tar balls should be taken seriously by everyone due to the random, but deadly, nature of bacteria. “It can be very little exposure,” said Dr. John Vande Waa, an infectious disease specialist at the University of South Alabama Medical Center in Mobile. “Just the wrong place at the wrong time.” BP disputes any tar ball – vibrio connection. [...]

http://www.wkrg.com/story/23875140/deadly-bacteria-vibrio-vulnificus-in-high-numbers-in-tarballs
WKRG, Updated Nov. 11, 2013: “The destruction in arms and legs, the flesh eating component, it’s two parts ,” said Vande Waa. “One is that the organism itself can destroy the tissues. The other is sepsis . The bacteria is in their bloodstream, it affects all the organs. Within my own experience of the cases the mortality has been approaching 40-50 percent.” There have been almost two dozen cases of vibrio vulnificus in Alabama over the last five years. There have been more than 30 cases in Florida this year alone including the death of an Escambia County man. Vande Waa says as rare as vibrio vulnificus is, it’s something that should be taken very seriously. And that’s why the research being done by this at Auburn University, and at the school’s lab at Dauphin Island is so disturbing. [...]

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/06/17/17greenwire-will-bacterial-plague-follow-crude-oil-spill-a-81599.html?pagewanted=all
New York Times, June 17, 2010: One of the more pressing questions involves Vibrios [...] vulnificus, kills dozens of Americans each year [...] there is a likely possibility, scientists say, that Vibrio growth could be further spurred, directly or indirectly, in response to the oil [...] “The question is: Will there be an inadvertent enhancement of the growth of these potential human pathogens?” said Rita Colwell, former director of the National Science Foundation and an expert in marine microbial life. [...] “There’s no question bacteria, in general, increase following spills, and this includes Vibrios,” said Jim Oliver, a Vibrio specialist at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. The Food and Drug Administration is aware of the Vibrio threat but believes the bacteria’s numbers will decline in parallel with the oil, said Meghan Scott, an FDA spokeswoman. [...]

Watch the WKRG broadcast here  http://www.wkrg.com/story/23882016/auburn-researcher-says-tar-balls-are-magnets-for-bacteria

 

AND WITH THAT, IF I LIVED ANYWHERE NEAR HANFORD, I WOULD CERTAINLY LEAVE NOW.








__________________________________

Suggested Further Reading

• Columbia River United (CRU), Hanford and the River, 1997
• D'Antonio, Michael, Atomic Harvest: Hanford and the Lethal Toll of America's Nuclear Arsenal, 1993, New York: Crown Publishers
• Gerber, Michelle, On the Home Front, 1992, Lincoln, NE: Univ. of NE Press
• Loeb, Paul, Nuclear Culture: Living and Working in the World's Largest Atomic Complex, 1986, (2nded.) Philadelphia: New Society Publishers
• Oregon Office of Energy, Hanford Cleanup: The First Ten Years, 1999, OOE Safety Division.
• U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE) Office on Environmental Management, Linking Legacies: Connecting the Cold War Nuclear Weapons Production Processes to Their Environmental Consequences, 1997, Washington, DC: USDOE
• USDOE Office of Environmental Management, Closing the Circle on Splitting of the Atom, 1996, Washington, DC: USDOE