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If you visited the Grand Canyon between year 2000 and June 18th 2019...You may have been NUKED!


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For nearly two decades at the Grand Canyon in Arizona, 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 and 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.


 


"If you were in the Museum Collections Building (2C) between the year 2000 and June 18, 2018, you were 'exposed' to uranium by OSHA's definition," Stephenson wrote. "The radiation readings, at first blush, exceeds (sic) the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's safe limits. … Identifying who was exposed, and your exposure level, gets tricky and is our next important task." The building is located in Grand Canyon Village, Arizona.


In a Feb. 11 email to Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and Deputy Inspector General Mary Kendall, Stephenson said he had repeatedly asked national park executives to inform the public, only to get stonewalled.


"Respectfully, it was not only immoral not to let Our People know," he added, "but I could not longer risk my (health and safety) certification by letting this go any longer."


According to Stephenson, the uranium specimens had been in a basement at park headquarters for decades, and were moved to the museum building when it opened, around 2000.


One of the buckets was so full that its lid would not close.


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.




 



The Nuclear Regulatory Commission measures radiation contamination in millisieverts per hour or per year. According to Stephenson, close exposures to the uranium buckets could have exposed adults to 400 times the health limit — and children to 4,000 times what is considered safe.


Emily Davis, a public affairs specialist at the Grand Canyon, said the Park Service is coordinating an investigation with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Arizona Department of Health Services.  


Davis stressed that a recent review of the building in question uncovered only background radiation, which is natural in the area and is safe.


"There is no current risk to the park employees or public," Davis said. "The building is open. … The information I have is that the rocks were removed, and there's no danger."


Davis declined to address Stephenson's assertion that thousands of people may have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, or his allegation that the Park Service violated the law by not issuing a public warning.


"We do take our public and employee safety and allegations seriously," she said.


 


Reached by phone at the South Rim, Stephenson said his only concern is the safety of everyone who spent time in a danger zone, and he alerted them only after failing for eight months to get park officials to act.


"I've never seen anything like this in my life," he said.


Stephenson said the uranium threat was discovered in March 2018 by the teenage son of a park employee who happened to be a Geiger counter  enthusiast, and brought a device to the museum collection room.


Workers immediately moved the buckets to another location in the building, he said, but nothing else was done.


A few months later, Stephenson said, he was assisting with a safety audit when employees told him about the uranium. As a former Army helicopter pilot who later worked as a safety manager in the Navy, Stephenson said he knew it was "bad mojo" and instantly called a National Parks specialist in Colorado.


Stephenson said specialists apparently had no Geiger counter, so they drove to Utah to pick up a Ludlum meter, which also measures radiation output.


The technicians reached the Grand Canyon several days after his call, on June 18. Lacking protective clothing, they purchased dish-washing and gardening gloves, and then used a broken mop handle to lift the buckets into a truck, Stephenson said.


Those details are corroborated by photographs Stephenson included in a 45-page slideshow created to document the radiation exposure and alleged cover-up.


Stephenson said technicians concealed the radiation readings from him and dumped the ore into Orphan Mine, an old uranium dig that is considered a potential Superfund site below the Rim, about two miles from Grand Canyon Village.


Rest of the story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2019/02/18/grand-canyon-tourists-exposed-radiation-safety-manager-says/2905358002/


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I don't know if there is any medical help possible to someone following radiation exposure, so if nothing else maybe sue the govt. and get paid for the harm?

No, there is no treatment(I used to work at a nuclear plant where you were exposed all the time), and it's highly unlikely they suffered any harm at all.  The way radiation exposure works, the dose reduces by 4 times with each doubling of distance, so if the reading at say 1 ft is 10 millirem/hour, at 2 ft it would be 2.5, at 4 ft it would be .625, etc. unless if someone sat next to it for prolonged periods, any exposure would be very low.

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No, there is no treatment(I used to work at a nuclear plant where you were exposed all the time), and it's highly unlikely they suffered any harm at all. The way radiation exposure works, the dose reduces by 4 times with each doubling of distance, so if the reading at say 1 ft is 10 millirem/hour, at 2 ft it would be 2.5, at 4 ft it would be .625, etc. unless if someone sat next to it for prolonged periods, any exposure would be very low.

sitting possibly within a few feet for 30 minutes sounds bad.
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sitting possibly within a few feet for 30 minutes sounds bad.

The article fails to mention the actual readings, without that it's all speculation, or should we say hysteria. For instance, did they take the reading looking down at the uncovered bucket? If it was a metal bucket that alone would block some of the radiation.

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Ok, I read the actual USA today article, it lists the readings, it said the reading was  13.0 millrems/hour next to the buckets(800 on contact), 5 ft away the reading was zero(which prob means less than 1). That is a fairly high reading, at the nuke plant I worked at a reading that high would get the area roped off and labeled a high radiation area, which would mean if you were near it you would walk by quickly.

 

However the article also says the museum was visited by about 1000 people a year, which means 4 a day if it's not open on weekends, in other words almost no one.

 

The readings are high, but if someone did sit right next to the bucket for that half hour, they would get about as much radiation as you would if you took a 3 hour plane ride.

 

So for comparison, sitting next to the bucket might give you 5 millirem exposure, a chest xray might give you 10 millirems, a CT scan might give you 500-1000(that's a lot), a mammogram  is 50+, several dental x-rays maybe 3-4.

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