[Vision2020] Chicago Tribune: Radiation from Idaho fire posed no health risks: officials

[Kenneth Marcy]

  Radiation from Idaho fire posed no health risks: officials

October 05, 2012|Laura Zuckerman | Reuters

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - Smoke from a wildfire in Idaho that burned 
mining sites with traces of uranium and thorium contained elevated 
levels of radiation, but none that posed a risk to human health, state 
officials said on Friday.

The state Department of Environmental Quality last month took air 
samples in North Fork, a town in the burn zone in east-central Idaho, 
after the so-called Mustang Complex fire swept through a former uranium 
mine and two abandoned gold mines.

Health officials said then they believed risks to people's health was 
low, and the latest findings back up that assessment. Residents in the 
area had expressed worries about the smoke.

Paul Ritter, health physicist with the state environmental agency, said 
in the area of the mining sites, smoke from the fire showed amounts of 
radiation roughly equivalent to emissions from a fire in 2000 that 
charred parts of Los Alamos National Laboratory, the nuclear weapons 
design facility in New Mexico.

"The readings are definitely elevated but not out of line with what has 
been measured in fires before. It is not a risk," he said.

Americans are exposed to an estimated 310 millirems of radiation a year 
from natural sources, including some rocks and soils, according to the 
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

An analysis of air samples in North Fork showed residents would have 
been exposed to 0.5 millirems of radiation in a 30-day period. That 
compares to a dose of 5 millirems delivered by a round-trip 
transcontinental flight, Ritter said.

"Residents certainly weren't in a bad state in terms of airborne 
radioactivity," he said.

The Mustang Complex fire has consumed nearly 340,000 acres of canyon 
lands and pine forests since it was ignited by lightning in late July in 
the Salmon-Challis National Forest.

Even without a danger from radioactivity, smoke from the blaze has posed 
a danger to residents, especially the young and the elderly, because it 
carries fine soot particles that can worsen existing respiratory or 
cardiovascular ailments.

The smoke triggered unhealthy air readings for more than a month in 
North Fork and Salmon in a pollution event that Idaho health officials 
said was unprecedented for its duration and predicted impacts on human 
health.

The findings of no significant risk from radiation did not ease concerns 
about exposure for Cindy Hallen, who lives 10 miles from the former 
uranium operation.

"There are too many unknowns," she said.

Estimates indicate that Idaho wildfires this year already have been 
responsible for more air pollutants being released into the atmosphere 
than all automobiles and industrial sources in the state, Governor C.L. 
"Butch" Otter said in a statement.

(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Eric Walsh)

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