Official accuses Grand Canyon of radiation coverup
For nearly two decades at the Grand Canyon in Arizona, tourists, employees and children passed three paint buckets stored in the national park’s museum collection building, unaware that they were being exposed to radiation.
Although federal officials learned last year that the 5-gallon containers were brimming with uranium ore and removed the radioactive specimens, the park’s safety director said nothing was done to warn park workers or the public that they might have been exposed to unsafe levels of radiation.
In an email sent to all Park Service
employees Feb. 4, Elston “Swede” Stephenson – the safety, health and wellness manager – described the alleged coverup as “a top management failure” and warned of possible health consequences.
“If you were in the Museum Collections Building (2C) between the year 2000 and June 18, 2018, you were ‘exposed’ to uranium by OSHA’s definition,” Stephenson wrote. “The radiation readings, at first blush, exceeds the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s safe limits. … Identifying who was exposed, and your exposure level, gets tricky and is our next important task.” The building is in Grand Canyon Village.
In a Feb. 11 email to acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and Deputy Inspector General Mary Kendall, Stephenson said he repeatedly asked national park executives to inform the public, only to be stonewalled.
“Respectfully, it was not only immoral not to let Our People know,” he wrote, “but I could not longer risk my (health and safety) certification by letting this go any longer.”
According to Stephenson, the specimens had been in a basement at park headquarters for decades and were moved to the museum building when it opened, around 2000. One of the buckets was so full its lid wouldn’t close.
Stephenson said the containers were stored next to a taxidermy exhibit, where children on tours stopped for presentations, sitting next to uranium for 30 minutes or more.
By his calculation, those children could have received radiation dosages in excess of federal safety standards within three seconds, and adults could have suffered dangerous exposure in less than a half-minute.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission measures radiation contamination in millisieverts per hour or per year. According to Stephenson, close exposures to the uranium buckets could have exposed adults to 400 times the health limit – and children to 4,000 times what is considered safe.
Emily Davis, a public affairs specialist at the Grand Canyon, said the Park Service is coordinating an investigation with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Arizona Department of Health Services.
Davis stressed that a review of the building in question uncovered only background radiation, which is natural in the area and is safe.
“There is no current risk to the park employees or public,” Davis said. “The building is open. … The information I have is that the rocks were removed, and there’s no danger.”
Davis declined to address Stephenson’s assertion that thousands of people may have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation, or his allegation that the Park Service violated the law by not issuing a public warning. “We do take our public and employee safety and allegations seriously,” she said.
Reached by phone at the South Rim, Stephenson said his only concern is the safety of everyone who spent time in a danger zone, and he alerted them only after failing to get park officials to act.
Stephenson said the uranium threat was discovered in March 2018 by a park employee’s teenage son who happened to be a Geiger counter enthusiast and brought a device to the museum collection room.
Workers moved the buckets, he said, but nothing else was done.
Months later, employees told him about the uranium, he said. He called a National Parks specialist in Colorado.
The technicians reached the Grand Canyon several days after his call, on June 18. Lacking protective clothing, they purchased dishwashing and gardening gloves, then used a broken mop handle to lift the buckets into a truck, Stephenson said.
Those details are corroborated by photographs Stephenson included in a 45-page slideshow created to document the radiation exposure.
Stephenson said technicians concealed the radiation readings from him and dumped the ore into Orphan Mine, an old uranium dig that is considered a potential Superfund site.
In November, Stephenson filed a report with OSHA, which sent inspectors to the museum building.
Stephenson said they detected a lowlevel site within the building and traced it to the three buckets, which Park Service technicians had returned to the building after dumping their contents.
Davis, the Park Service spokeswoman, declined comment on those details.
A spokesman for OSHA confirmed an investigation is underway but declined to provide any other information.
Stephenson said the uranium exposure saga developed while he was pursuing a racial-discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity office. He is African-American.
He said high-level officials in the Park Service developed a “secrecy pact” to conceal radiation exposure data despite his insistence that a “Right to Know” law mandates public disclosure.
Stephenson obtained a report submitted by the Park Service’s regional safety manager confirming the area was “positive for radioactivity above background.”
The report indicated radiation levels at 13.9 millirems per hour where the buckets were stored, and 800 per hour on contact with the ore.
The NRC says a maximum safe dosage for the public, beyond natural radiation, is no more than 2 millirems per hour, or 100 per year.
The report’s recommendations did not call for public notification but suggested guidelines for handling and storing geology samples in the future.
In his letter to colleagues, Stephenson apologized for the untimely notice. He stressed exposure may not be severe, depending on how close people got to the source, how long they were exposed, what they wore, etc. He emphasized employees will not necessarily suffer health consequences but should consider receiving a screening.