Hawley and Bush send joint letter requesting radioactive testing of Missouri school district
Rachel Schilke
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Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley (R) and Rep. Cori Bush (D) requested that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers launch additional radioactive containment testing at Hazelwood School District properties.
Several past reports have indicated that Jana Elementary School might be contaminated with nuclear waste from the World War II-era Manhattan Project. The waste was dumped into the nearby Coldwater Creek.
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The school was shut down in September 2022 after an independent report discovered as much as 22 times the expected levels of radioactive isotope lead-210 in the play yards.
Three investigations have been launched, and all three rounds of testing yielded conflicting results. The third investigation, launched by the USACE in November 2022, found no contamination inside the school or in multiple soil samples, per an Associated Press report.
Despite this result, Hawley and Bush urged USACE to conduct additional testing at all of the school system’s properties, not just Jana Elementary, in a letter to Chief of Engineers Lt. Gen. Scott A. Spellmon on Wednesday.
“Following the closure of Jana Elementary School, students and parents have had their lives upended while waiting for answers and help from the federal government,” the Missouri politicians wrote. “The school district has actively reassigned students throughout the district, raising questions for some parents about the extent of any contamination.”
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While it is uncertain how much of an effect the radioactive levels had on the community, a 2013 health study found that there was a higher number of cases of leukemia, breast, colon, kidney, prostate, and bladder cancers in residents who lived near the supposed contamination sites.
The politicians requested that the USACE reimburse the school district for testing conducted at its expense, make all testing results available to the public, and communicate remediation efforts to parents.
“Concerned parents deserve certainty about the safety of their children’s learning environment, and on that, USACE can and should help,” they wrote.
Radioactive waste in northern St. Louis areas dates back to 1942, when local company Mallinckrodt Chemical Works was contracted by the federal government to process uranium used to make atomic bombs in New Mexico’s Manhattan Project.
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The waste, originally stored in the St. Louis airport, was moved to different dump sites in the 1960s. Coldwater Creek was one of them.
A cleanup process of the creek began in the 1990s and is ongoing.