Toxic Wastes Buried, but Not Town’s Fears

Radioactive wastes from a factory that once supplied radium to Madame Curie and helped build the first atomic bombs have been sealed and buried under 25 feet of dirt, but the cleanup has not calmed residents’ fears.

“People living in the proximity of the site are still leery. I’m leery,” said the Rev. Robert G. Balthorpe. “I don’t want to expose my family to radiation.”

Cleanup of the 31-acre site, now nearing completion, is the first of 24 projects by the federal government involving radioactive leftovers known as uranium mill tailings.

200,000 Tons of Waste

Canonsburg, about 20 miles south of Pittsburgh, was once home to Standard Chemical Co. and later Vetro Corp. of America, companies that produced more than 200,000 tons of radioactive waste between 1911 and 1957.

The wastes were buried under an industrial park, but, in 1977, the U.S. Department of Energy found radioactivity two to three times higher than normal up to a third of a mile away.

The government designated the site and 23 others in 1978 for immediate cleanup.

Contaminated dirt and other materials were removed from 155 private properties around the industrial park and buried with the wastes in a clay-lined “encapsulation cell” designed to last at least 200 years.

Residents Near Waste Site

Eight thousand of the town’s 11,000 residents live within a mile of the dirt mound under which the wastes are buried.

“Right now, if you were to walk around the cell, you couldn’t tell there was anything here,” said James Yusko, health physicist for the state Department of Environmental Resources. “The radiation levels now are at background.”

However, Isabella Spinosa, who lives about 500 feet from the site and whose husband contracted leukemia in 1980, said the wastes should have been removed.

“Every house on this street has cancer. In every house, somebody has died,” said Spinosa, 69. “That kind of preys on your mind all the time.”

Informal citizen surveys of people living nearby turned up “a lot of strange health problems,” including what appeared to be a higher-than-normal cancer rate, said one-time resident Janis Dunn, 48.

Death Rates Checked

“We’re not aware of any increased incidence of cancer,” said David Ball, Department of Energy project engineer for the Canonsburg site. “The state checked all the death certificates in that area, and it wasn’t any higher than the national average.”

In 1982, two University of Pittsburgh studies failed to corroborate residents’ fears about higher rates of illness, but some residents dispute the studies and have sent urine samples to the International Institute of Public Health in Toronto for testing.

The results are due later this year. The president of the institute, Sister Rosalie Bertell, said the tests so far have shown traces of polonium and radioactive lead, which can damage bone marrow, blood cells and the immune and reproductive systems.