[CPEO-MEF] RADIATION: "Uranium Contamination Haunts Navajo Country"

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Uranium Contamination Haunts Navajo Country

By DAN FROSCH
New York Times
July 27, 2009


TEEC NOS POS, Ariz. - It was one year ago that the environmental 
scientist showed up at Fred Slowman's door, deep in the heart of Navajo 
country, and warned that it was unsafe for him to stay there.

The Slowman home, the same one-level cinderblock structure his family 
had lived in for nearly a half-century, was contaminated with 
potentially dangerous levels of uranium from the days of the cold war, 
when hundreds of uranium mines dotted the vast tribal land known as the 
Navajo Nation. The scientist advised Mr. Slowman, his wife and their two 
sons to move out until their home could be rebuilt.

"I was angry," Mr. Slowman said. "I guess it was here all this time, and 
we never knew."

The legacy wrought from decades of uranium mining is long and painful 
here on the expansive reservation. Over the years, Navajo miners 
extracted some four million tons of uranium ore from the ground, much of 
it used by the United States government to make weapons.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/us/27navajo.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=uranium%20contamination&st=cse

--


Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org



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