It could be two years before local residents have any answers concerning a potential link between apparent health problems and Manhattan Project radioactive waste that may have washed into St. Louis County’s Coldwater Creek.
The St. Louis County Department of Public Health has teamed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) for a health assessment that will study cases from potentially thousands of people who might have inhaled or ingested contaminants. Dr. Faisal Khan, director of the Saint Louis County agency, said Wednesday that on average, a public health assessment takes between 18 and 24 months to complete. The assessment began in January.
In the 1940s, St. Louis-based Mallinckrodt Chemical Works produced uranium for the first atomic bomb. Waste from the project was eventually moved to off-site storage at the St. Louis Airport Site. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program has been tasked with cleaning up the area.
ColdwaterCreekFacts.com, a local group in which residents share information on the matter, has garnered more than 13,000 Facebook members, who share stories about family members being diagnosed with cancer and suffering other health problems. Khan said the agencies conducting the assessment have already made contact with hundreds of people.
“That’s an ongoing process,” he said Wednesday in a phone interview. “That number keeps increasing.”
Khan said it is important to keep in mind that other industrial entities operated in the St. Louis area in the 1930s and onward, including a metal works plant and an automotive plant.
“(Metal works plants) typically use very strong chemicals to cut grease and lubricate the metal,” Khan said. “All those exposures need to be characterized. If you’re going to try to answer questions about any conditions, particularly cancerous conditions, exposures of all kinds need to be taken into account. Because cancer isn’t just a product of one type of exposure. It could be anything: occupational related, residential related, chemical, toxicological, chemical, you name it.”
The assessment will explore all routes for potential contamination. The broad areas include: skin contact, inhalation, ingestion, mucus-membrane contact, and eye contact. Khan said the agencies will try to document any unique exposure routes outside that spectrum, as well.
“(We’re going to) let people describe the way they grew up, the way they were exposed, potentially, to these contaminants, try to collate that with information from all the other data sources to define routes of exposure,” Khan said.
About 200 people reportedly attended a public meeting in Florissant, Mo., last week. According to KMOX CBS in St. Louis, attendees shared anecdotal evidence of health problems, including a rare cancer diagnosis and family members who used to swim in the creek and now as adults cannot bear children.
The Army Corps of Engineers said it has has completed cleaning sources of contaminants that could have contributed to the contamination of Coldwater Creek and adjacent properties. Spokeswoman Amanda Kruse said via email Wednesday that crews have begun remediation of public spaces along the creek, including residential areas.
Complete remediation, she said, could take seven to 12 years, based on the estimated extent of required remediation, actual data, models, and anticipated funding levels. For Saint Louis Airport Site Vicinity Properties, which include Coldwater Creek, FUSRAP will receive a total of $42.05 million in funding for fiscal 2016, and it has requested $24.55 million for fiscal 2017. Funding is unknown beyond that point.
