General Discussion

discocrisco01

(1,666 posts) Sun Apr 10, 2016, 11:50 PM Apr 2016

For The Navajo Nation, Uranium Mining's Deadly Legacy Lingers

Many Navajo people have died of kidney failure and cancer, conditions linked to uranium contamination. And new research from the CDC shows uranium in babies born now.

Mining companies blasted 4 million tons of uranium out of Navajo land between 1944 and 1986. The federal government purchased the ore to make atomic weapons. As the Cold War threat petered out the companies left, abandoning more than 500 mines.

Maria Welch is a field researcher with the Southwest Research Information Center, which is working with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state and local groups to gauge the impacts of uranium on Navajo families today. She surveys Navajo families for the Navajo Birth Cohort Study, which has 599 participants so far.

When they did the mining, there would be these pools that would fill up. And all of the kids swam in them. And my dad did, too.
Maria Welch, a Navajo researcher studying the effects of uranium contamination
On a recent day in Flagstaff, Ariz., she asks a mother about feeding practices for her baby. Forty percent of the tribe lacks running water. Welch learns that the mother mixes baby formula with tap water.

Read more at
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/10/473547227/for-the-navajo-nation-uranium-minings-deadly-legacy-lingers

6 replies

= new reply since forum marked as read

Highlight:

For The Navajo Nation, Uranium Mining's Deadly Legacy Lingers (Original Post) discocrisco01 Apr 2016 OP

Yikes. Something needs to be done. Especially with the recent environmental disaster. AgadorSparticus Apr 2016 #1

It is not just the Navajo reservations..... prairierose Apr 2016 #2

+10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000! 2naSalit Apr 2016 #3

Fission's legacy Crash2Parties Apr 2016 #4

A peril that dwelt among the Navajos Javaman Apr 2016 #5

K&R! felix_numinous Apr 2016 #6

AgadorSparticus

(7,963 posts)

1. Yikes. Something needs to be done. Especially with the recent environmental disaster.

Reply to discocrisco01 (Original post)

Sun Apr 10, 2016, 11:57 PM

Apr 2016

prairierose

(2,145 posts)

2. It is not just the Navajo reservations.....

Reply to discocrisco01 (Original post)

Mon Apr 11, 2016, 12:11 AM

Apr 2016

everywhere they mined uranium, they left the same type of death and destruction in their wake. There are parts of the reservations here in South Dakota that are contaminated in the same way. People's water is contaminated and they have no alternative. Now they want to start mining uranium here again. It is way past time for these corporations to begin to clean up their messes and it is past time to stop them from committing more crimes against humanity.

2naSalit

(86,647 posts)

3. +10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000!

Reply to prairierose (Reply #2)

Mon Apr 11, 2016, 12:16 AM

Apr 2016

Crash2Parties

(6,017 posts)

4. Fission's legacy

Reply to discocrisco01 (Original post)

Mon Apr 11, 2016, 02:02 AM

Apr 2016

Everywhere it was mined, everywhere it was processed, everywhere it was used and everywhere the waste has been stored...

Yet proponents still try to sell it to the public as "perfectly safe".

Also, a lot of money was made off of it. Still is being made in certain industries. The human cost is not part of the corporate profit calculations at this point so they simply don't exist. Makes me wonder if that sort of thing is a minor reason why we still don't have nationalized health care: we'd actually have to accept and deal with the human cost of otherwise "profitable" enterprises.

Javaman

(62,530 posts)

5. A peril that dwelt among the Navajos

Reply to discocrisco01 (Original post)

Mon Apr 11, 2016, 12:25 PM

Apr 2016

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-na-navajo19nov19-story.html

For the most part, they were happy with the purchase. Their Navajo hogan was situated well, between a desert mesa and the trading-post road. The eight-sided dwelling proved stout and snug, with walls of stone and wood, and a green-shingle roof.

The single drawback was the bare dirt underfoot. So three years after moving in, the Holidays jumped at the chance to get a real floor. A federally funded program would pay for installation if they bought the materials. The Holidays couldn't afford to, but the contractor, a friend of theirs, had an idea.

He would use sand and crushed rock that had washed down from an old uranium mine in the mesa, one of hundreds throughout the Navajo reservation that once supplied the nation's nuclear weapons program. The waste material wouldn't cost a cent. "He said it made good concrete," Mary Holiday recalled.

>snip<

Fifty years ago, cancer rates on the reservation were so low that a medical journal published an article titled "Cancer immunity in the Navajo."

felix_numinous

(5,198 posts)

6. K&R!

Reply to discocrisco01 (Original post)

Mon Apr 11, 2016, 05:04 PM

Apr 2016

Reply to this discussion