When Diane Schaig's father, Bill, returned home from work at the Mallinckrodt factory in St. Louis, he took off his clothes in the garage and gave them to his mother to wash immediately, but he left the house dirty with the leftovers of his labor. I didn't dare to do that. .
Mr. Scheig, an ironworker who helped build the city's famous arches, never told his family exactly what he was doing in the factory where scientists first began processing uranium for the Manhattan Project in 1942. There wasn't. However, by the age of 49, he lost his ability to walk to kidney cancer and died.
Decades later, Diane's older sister, Cheryl, who had given birth to a boy with a softball-sized tumor in her stomach a few years earlier, died of brain and lung cancer at the age of 54. Her neighbor, who lived two doors down from her, died of appendiceal cancer at the age of 49. Many of her classmates have died of cancer, so a large round table with their photos is now a staple at her high school reunions.
“I know for myself that when I turned 49, I was grateful,” Shaig said. “And when I turned 54, I was grateful.”
The Mallinckrodt plant processed uranium, allowing scientists at the University of Chicago to create the first artificially controlled nuclear reaction, paving the way for the first atomic bomb.
But the plant and the programs it offered left a different legacy. Epidemics of cancer, autoimmune diseases, and other mysterious illnesses have torn apart generations of families like Scheig's in St. Louis and other exposed communities across the country. Materials used to power a nuclear arms race.
Currently in Congress, a bill would allow those harmed by the program to receive federal compensation from federal laws enacted to help victims, including in New Mexico, Arizona, Tennessee, and Washington. We are working on formulating the following.
harmful legacy
In the 1940s, when workers were churning out 50,000 tons of uranium to supply the country's early atomic weapons, the factory was also spewing tons of nuclear waste.
Over the next few decades, hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive waste stored in open steel drums were removed and dumped across the city. The waste seeped into the soil over a wide area, including the land that would later become a baseball field.
That water then flowed into Coldwater Creek, a tributary that snakes 31 miles across the metropolitan area through backyards and public parks where children play and catch crawfish. The stream regularly floods during heavy storms.
Similar stories are told across the country, including among Navajo workers in New Mexico and Arizona who were sent into mines with buckets and shovels to dig up uranium, with no knowledge of the dangers involved. Ta. Children of workers at uranium processing plants in Tennessee and Washington. and downwind residents of the Southwest who inhaled radioactive fallout from mushroom clouds created by ground tests.
None of these areas are eligible for aid under the only federal law that compensates civilians seriously injured by the nation's nuclear weapons program. Passed in 1990, the law was narrowly designed to help some uranium miners and a small number of communities that were participating in above-ground testing. Applicants, including children and grandchildren of people who would have benefited from the program but died, will receive a lump sum payment of between $50,000 and $100,000.
The Senate last month, led by Sens. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-New Mexico), added thousands of new participants, including Missouri families like the Shaigs. passed legislation that would update and dramatically expand the law to include people with disabilities.
If Congress does not pass the bill by June, the law will expire completely and funds will close for those who are currently eligible and who have been severely harmed by radiation exposure and will need federal funds to continue. Access to the local cancer screening clinics they rely on will also be cut off. operating.
Reading their laws means visualizing a map of the physical and psychological damage that the nation's nuclear legacy has seared into communities across the country, years after the first nuclear test at Los Alamos. To do.
“This speaks to the magnitude of the burden,” Hawley, a conservative Republican who is seeking re-election this year, said in an interview. “This case speaks to the heroism of those who have taken upon themselves the burden of nearly every case for more than 50 years. Some of my colleagues complained about the cost. Now, Who do they think is paying for that cost now?”
Momentum to expand the nuclear reparations program has been raging on Capitol Hill for years, adopted by various members and inching the plan forward, but without securing a vote in the House or Senate. could not.
But the issue received a jolt when Mr. Hawley took up the issue, worked with Mr. Luján to draft the bill, and used his position on the Armed Services Committee to attach it to the annual defense policy bill. .
Senators were back to square one when the measure was removed from the final version of the bill after Republicans opposed the costly bill, which Congressional Scorekeepers estimated could reach $140 billion. Hawley and Luján encouraged more senators to support the bill, saying it would benefit states by removing sweeping new provisions that force the federal government to pay for victims' medical care and adding new communities. I urged them to do so.
When the bill finally reached the full Senate for a vote last month, it passed 69-30 after a back and forth between Hawley and Sen. Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader. Ta.
“bleeding”
St. Louis's radioactive fate was sealed during a 1942 lunch at an elite Nuday club in the city's downtown. At that time, Arthur Compton, chief executive of the Manhattan Project and former dean of physics at the University of Washington, met with Edward Mallinckrodt Jr. A scientist who ran his family's chemical company. Three other companies had already rejected Mr. Compton's request to begin refining uranium for bomb development. Mr. Mallinckrodt, a longtime friend of Mr. Compton, replied.
Eighty years later, the impact of that decision is immediately visible as you drive through St. Louis. Cleaning the creek is expected to take until 2038, according to the Missouri Independent.
At the site of the former airport, where the first radioactive waste from the plant was stored, workers in white Tyvek hazmat suits and bright yellow boots stand behind a fence decorated with yellow warning signs. You can see them digging in the ground behind them from the highway. Next to a railroad car loaded with contaminated soil.
A few miles down the road is the Westlake Landfill, a pit that holds thousands of tons of radioactive waste that originated in Mallinckrodt and was illegally dumped in an area now surrounded by chain restaurants, warehouses, and hospitals. By 2010, the fire was discovered to be growing approximately 300 feet underground from the radioactive material.
Around the same time, Kim Visintin, an engineer turned medical professional, said in a conversation with a friend that the rate of severe rare cancers in her family and classmates was “beyond the norm historically. I began to realize that it was much more than that. she said. Vicintine's son Zach was born with glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer, and died at the age of six.
She started a Facebook page called “Coldwater Creek — Just the Facts” and began mapping reports of serious radiation-related illnesses and coloring severely affected areas in shades of red. There were soon thousands of examples.
“It looked like blood was flowing,” Visintine said of the red color on the map.
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The disease has spread throughout the city, reaching deep into the family tree.
Karl Chappell's father, a chemical operator, walked to work at the plant in the early 1950s, until scientists began working at the company's vast hematite facility, where scientists researched and produced highly enriched nuclear fuel. It was there that his father was exposed to a radiation leak in 1956.
“I didn't know it was radioactive,” Chappell recalled in an interview. “All we knew was that he had been exposed to some kind of toxic chemical spill and was hospitalized for several days before being released and sent home.”
Eight years later, his father was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Within another eight years he died. He was 48 years old.
Decades later, at age 40, Chappell's son Stephen was diagnosed with a rare type of mucinous cancer that started in his appendix and spread throughout his abdomen. He died at the age of 44.
For some families, developing cancer feels inevitable. Kay Hake's father, Marvin, was an engineer at the Mallinckrodt plant and survived bladder, prostate and skin cancer. Her husband, John, who worked as a heavy equipment operator, was part of a team of workers sent several years ago to help clean up toxic waste from another uranium plant in Mallinckrodt. Sometimes she was given protective equipment to wear, but sometimes she wasn't.
“Every time we get sick, we think maybe it's cancer,” Hake said in a recent interview over coffee. “Sometimes we plan for the future, but then we say, 'Let's not plan too much and enjoy life more,' because we don't know if we'll be successful or not.”
“Whether it happens or not, it's a different story,” Hake added. “It’s time.”
Kristen Comuso, who grew up near the creek and has lobbied extensively for the program's expansion through her work with the Missouri Environmental Coalition, found some small solace in the hope that her family's suffering would end with her. .
After Komso developed thyroid cancer, doctors removed her thyroid, adrenal glands, gallbladder, and eventually her uterus and ovaries. At first, Komso said in an interview that she was “really sad that she would no longer be able to have children of her own.”
“But at the same time, there's a part of me that thinks maybe there was some luck in there,” she added. “Because we're not passing on anything to the new generation.”
She was on the Senate floor in March when lawmakers approved a bill expanding the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act to cover Missourians like her. She says the provisions in current law that fund testing clinics for survivors alone would help. This is because she sometimes skips medical appointments when she cannot afford them.
When it passed, “I wanted to clap and scream and scream,” Komso said.
But she also found it jarring to see how nonchalant senators were as they voted on their fate, giving the Senate clerk the usual thumbs-up and thumbs-up. .
“When you see people say yes or no to your life, does your life matter to them? It's about what you say and do to convince people that you matter. Is it necessary?”