Professor addresses mining impact

By John Crane

Published: November 8, 2008

CHATHAM — Uranium mining in the Southwest after WWII caused health and environmental ruin among the Navajos, but the impact of mining uranium ore in Southside Virginia remains to be seen, according to a Harvard-educated professor from Tufts University.

Douglas M. Brugge, associate professor in Tufts University Medical School’s Department of Public Health and Family Medicine, spoke to more than 100 people at the Community Center in Chatham on Saturday night. The Dan River Basin Association sponsored the event.

Brugge said he doesn’t know how Virginia Uranium Inc. will mine a deposit at Coles Hill, and he doesn’t know enough about the area’s hydrogeology to determine the effects of mining and milling in Pittsylvania County. The weather and geology are different in the Southwest, where about 6,000 people in Utah who suffered the effects of uranium mining and milling have been compensated under the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990, he said. 

Businesses mined uranium in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah and left behind a mess, Brugge said. 

“Uranium waste, tailings (and) low-grade ore were left exposed and not dealt with in a careful manner,” Brugge said.

Brugge outlined a history of uranium mining in the Southwest and the known health effects of the practice. Just after WWII, the federal government was the sole legal buyer of uranium in the United States, and that generated a mining boom in the Southwest, Brugge said. But up to 25 years after it ended, tailings and abandoned mines can still be found in the backyards of Navajos, with children playing among the waste, Brugge said as he showed photos.

Uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years and goes through a decaying process, changing back-and-forth from uranium to thorium and to radon. Those exposed to uranium are exposed to a number of substances, Brugge said.

“Radon is an exquisitely potent … carcinogen,” he said, adding that it is known to cause lung cancer. However, it’s more hazardous in confined spaces and doesn’t travel in the air for long distances, he said. 

Most of the bad health effects of uranium come from heavy-metal toxicity, Brugge said. Preliminary results of research currently performed by one of Brugge’s graduate students show kidney damage and birth defects among people living in proximity to uranium on the Navajo reservation. 

It is among mine workers that health consequences of uranium are most strongly proven, he said. 

Also, a lab study found that uranium can cause genetic mutations and has estrogenic compounds that can feminize male animals, Brugge said. Effects on humans in that regard are not clear, he said.

“It’s worrisome and definitely worthy of further investigation,” Brugge said.

Other, more solidly known health effects in humans include radium causing bone cancer and leukemia and arsenic resulting in lung and skin cancers, Brugge said.

Henry Hurt, an investor in VUI, attended the presentation and said Brugge’s speech proved points that the company has emphasized.

“The lessons learned have led to advances in tailings management” and tighter regulations, Hurt said. What happened to the Navajos decades ago is an example of how not to mine and mill uranium, Hurt said.