plutonium in Livermore/state report

[marylia <marylia@igc.org>]

Hi. The CA state health department just came out with a report on plutonium
in the Livermore community - in the sludge at the sewage treatment plant
and in the soil at a local park. Our group has worked on getting action
taken on these polluted areas for a long time, and there are alot of issues
and as-yet-unanswered questions. The California state report and its
conclusions (e.g. that more sampling and follow up is needed) are a welcome
addition to the body of analysis on this topic. Several people I know who
are on list servers with me have called and asked me to email information
on this. The report itself is too long to email, and anyway I don't have an
electronic version. However, here is a (much shorter) article that appeared
in our local paper - the Valley Times. Peace, Marylia

Valley Times
Section: News
Published: 02/18/98

Path of nuclear sludge sought
Plutonium from lab in 1967 ended up in soil additives spread across the
Livermore Valley
Byline: Peter Weiss

LIVERMORE Federal and state health investigators want to know how far
radioactive sewage from Lawrence Livermore Laboratory was spread across the
Livermore Valley.

Plutonium-laced sewage found its way into Livermore's sewage treatment
plant in 1967. Once there, it ended up in sludge that was supposedly
distributed widely to city parks and private property owners as a soil
conditioner. Investigators, working on the first public health assessment
of the lab, would also like to determine just how potent it was.

No one knows how far the sludge was carried by people who came to the
sewage treatment plant to acquire a free soil additive for lawns and
gardens. Supposedly names and addresses were recorded, but investigators
say the sewer plant came up empty when inspectors asked for the log book.

The report, released Tuesday by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and
Disease Registry and the California Department of Health Services, also
calls for deeper investigation of lab-caused plutonium contamination at Big
Trees Park which was under investigation in 1994 and 1995 by the lab, the
state and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

The report concurs with the lab and other agencies that the levels found so
far at the park are "below a level of health concern," but public health
experts literally want to dig further into park soil to learn if plutonium
levels continue to increase with depth as the levels did in prior samples.

On both matters of sludge and park contamination, the health investigation
team is seeking response from citizens, officials said, both in writing and
at a public meeting set for Feb 25.

"The past distribution of contaminated sewage sludge throughout the
Livermore area is a potential health concern that warrants further
investigation," the federal-state team concluded.

Already the lab has roundly criticized the report. On both scores, the lab
cited prior studies that found the plutonium levels pose no health dangers
and argued that further studies are unwarranted. There is no dispute from
the lab that both the park's excess plutonium and the plutonium in the
sewer release originated from its operations.
The lab is under scrutiny by the Atlanta-based disease registry because it
is a Superfund site. State investigators were hired by the federal agency
to help assess lab contamination as a potential public health risk.

The new report has already prompted a formal response from the EPA. It
agreed with the lab that no further action is needed regarding Big Trees
Park's contamination, but has made no comment on the sewer sludge.

The 4.2-acre park lies within three-fourths of a mile west of the lab in
the Rhonewood neighborhood. It adjoins Arroyo Seco Elementary School.

Plutonium is a toxic, radioactive metal used as the nuclear explosive in
warheads.

Finding out more about plutonium in both the park and the sludge makes
sense to Michael Ferrucci, a Livermore resident who serves on a 22-member
committee acting as community advisers to the joint federal-state study.

"I'm not convinced that there is any safe level of plutonium, because it's
not naturally occurring. This is somewhere it doesn't belong," he said,
referring to the park.

The amount of plutonium in the sludge could have been higher than reported
by lab and sewer officials in the 1970s, the report states. Some of the lab
studies came long after the release and none of the analyses measured
plutonium concentrations in the solid fraction of the sewage, where the
radioactive substance tends to accumulate, investigators found.

David Myers, a lab radiation safety expert who has closely studied the
sludge question, disagreed.

"We had measures of what left the lab and what arrived (at the sewage
treatment plant) and there seems to be good agreement. We didn't have a big
discrepancy," he said.

Although he wasn't the scientist who conducted the tests, Myers said he
believes the measurements reflected accurately the amount of solids in the
sludge.

Although parks officials say no sludge was added to soils by their workers
when Big Trees Park was first developed in the 1970s, lab scientists insist
that sludge is the most likely explanation for levels of plutonium up to
1,000 times higher than levels expected from global fallout discovered at
the park.

But the investigation team is mainly interested in the potential risk of
the sludge, not merely as the solution to park contamination.
The new report dismisses lab speculation that private citizens might have
dumped sludge in the park. "More plausible" the team said, is the
possibility of undocumented aerial releases or polluted lab soil washing
into Arroyo Seco, which runs by the park.

Lab officials said their regular monitoring would have detected any
releases, but it didn't.

The public meeting will be 6 to 9 p.m. on Feb. 25 at Valley Memorial
Hospital, Health Education classroom, 1111 East Stanley Blvd., Livermore.

end