Piketon asking for radioactivity assessment
WASHINGTON — The southern Ohio community that closed its middle school over concerns about radioactive contamination has requested that a North Canton company provide a third-party assessment to study the scope of the problem.
Matt Brewster, health commissioner with the Pike County General Health District, said Tuesday that community leaders have recommended that Solutient Technologies conduct the independent assessment in Pike County.
Solutient, which says it offers “full-scope radiological services, environmental consulting and remediation services,” would be tasked with developing a sampling and analysis plan, data quality objectives and field sampling in the area near the
shuttered Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Piketon.
The U.S. Department of Energy, which is overseeing cleanup of the federal uranium enrichment plant, and community leaders agreed to a third-party assessment after the Scioto Valley Local School District closed Zahn’s Corner Middle School in Piketon on May 13. Community leaders learned that Department of Energy air monitors had detected trace amounts of neptunium in 2017. A Northern Arizona
University analysis also detected contamination in the community, including at the school.
The leaders’ recommendation came the same week that a second group of Pike County residents filed a class-action lawsuit over concerns about radioactive contamination from the plant, which is undergoing a multibillion-dollar, multiyear cleanup that began in 2001.
In their suit, plaintiffs Ray Pritchard and Sharon Melick say that “critical mistakes” have occurred during the cleanup and shutdown of what is known locally as the A-plant, and those led to airborne contamination and contaminated
groundwater. The lawsuit says that tests on deer killed by cars in the community showed uranium isotopes in the animals’ livers, and other tests show traces of uranium in milk and eggs from area farms.
The suit seeks damages for loss of use and enjoyment of property, property damage and loss of property value, plus “declaratory relief as necessary to protect human health and the environment.”
The Pike County General Health District is not involved in either lawsuit, but it said in a prepared statement Tuesday that it is collecting preliminary data for use in a cancer cluster study. Brewster has asked
the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to perform the study, but he said the agency will not proceed until the third-party assessment is complete.
Some 479 individuals have filled out the district’s online cancer cluster study form and a community group has collected an additional 115 names of those who live near or are connected to the plant and have suffered cancer or other negative health effects.
The Department of Energy has consistently said the doses of radioactive material detected in its air monitors were too low to be harmful. But Brewster dismissed that argument, saying, “We accept zero increased risk for our schoolchildren and community simply because our community hosts a DOE facility and activities from that facility have caused off-site contamination.”
“No matter how small the level of what DOE has allowed to end up inside our school is, an increased risk to the health and wellbeing of our students and staff is the result,” Brewster said. “We will not accept our children having a higher risk to illness than any other child in Ohio.”