Feds: Radiation at school normal
WASHINGTON — The Department of Energy said Thursday that 44 surface samples of dust taken from a southern Ohio middle school over Memorial Day weekend detected no radioactivity above naturally occurring levels.
The Ohio Department of Health, which tested separate samples, agreed.
In releasing a 16-page report on the results of the testing, the Department of Energy, which for years operated the nearby former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, sought to assure a community worried about possible radioactive contamination that Zahn’s Corner Middle School poses no health risk to the children in the community.
The Scioto Valley Local School District closed
the school on May 13 after two reports — one conducted during routine air monitoring outside the school by the Department of Energy, and the other from a researcher at Northern Arizona University — detected small levels of radioactive contamination at the school, which serves more than 300 students.
The Energy Department responded by saying that the trace amounts of neptunium 237 detected in its air monitors in 2017 were well below the threshold considered a risk to public health. The department later disclosed that air monitors outside the middle school detected trace amounts of americium 241 in 2018 — again, well below the level believed to put public health at risk.
In the aftermath of the district’s decision to close the school at least temporarily, the department and community agreed to allow a third party — picked by the community — to conduct additional tests on the site.
Still, Energy Department scientists went to Pike County on Memorial Day weekend to do their own testing, distributing three smears from each sample to themselves, the Ohio Department of Health and the Pike County General Health District for analysis.
The results of the federal department’s tests — which were analyzed at the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina — “did not indicate anything above naturally occurring background radiation,” said one Energy Department official.
“Those samples did not indicate the presence of any manmade isotopes such as neptunium, plutonium and americium,” the official said. “All that’s there is what God created when the planet formed.”
The agency’s principal deputy press secretary, Kelly Love, said in a written statement, “There is no public health or safety risk from radioactive material preventing Zahn’s Corner Middle School from opening this fall … DOE is committed to the safety, health and protection of our workforce, the general public and the environment at all our sites.”
On Thursday, the state health department said its findings were consistent with those of the Energy Department.
“According to the data collected on May 25 by the (health department), there is no radiation-related health hazard for the children or staff who attend classes and work at the school,” said Ohio’s health director, Amy Acton.
The results of the sample distributed to Pike County were less definitive, in part because the samples were tested differently, according to a source familiar with the testing.
Those samples were analyzed by Michael Ketterer, the Northern Arizona University scientist who conducted one of the original tests detecting radioactive materials in the community.
Ketterer questioned the Energy Department’s methodology, saying the samples were taken using glass fibers that were already contaminated with naturally occurring uranium. He said he detected uranium in the blank filters that came right out of the box.
“I was thinking when I saw that, ‘Why would they choose this medium because it’s contaminated?’” adding that it was “kind of ridiculous.”
The community member who gathered dust samples for him, Ketterer said, “obtained better samples more accurately with baby wipes from the Dollar Store.”
An official with the Energy Department dismissed Ketterer’s criticism, saying, “Our swipes follow standard industry procedures.”
Despite the results of the Memorial Day testing, an Energy Department official said Thursday that the agency is still “committed” to paying an independent third party to perform additional testing of the site — something the Pike County General Health Department requested when the community closed the school.
Acton said the state health department “strongly” supports the third-party testing.
Brandon Wooldridge, president of the school district’s Board of Education, said he was not surprised that results of the tests varied.
“The importance of the independent, third-party sampling and analysis effort cannot be higher,” he said. “The schools and community deserve to know what is in our environment from the A-plant ... rest assured, we will insist that (the Energy Department) control their radioactive release and that no one will occupy the Zahn’s Corner School until we are certain it is safe and our children and staff have no greater risk of exposure than any child in any other school in Ohio.”
Ketterer said his training is simply in detecting the presence of manmade radioactive contamination; he’s not a medical doctor and cannot talk about how much radiation is too much.
“My training is simply to say, ‘Here’s where these things come from based on these characteristics, based on these isotopes,’” he said. “What I did conclude with no doubt is that there is enriched uranium from the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant detected in these dusts.”
He said he stands by his earlier study indicating the presence of radioactive materials — the tests that found contamination at the middle school. He said he has considered offering splits of his initial report to the Energy Department so it can test what he found in those samples.
“I will put my data up against anybody’s,” he said. “I know what I’m doing … I guess at this point in time, I don’t have an opinion on what they’re saying and why. Obviously, I think my conclusion is correct.”