A plaintiff who grew up within two miles of the Department of Energy’s Portsmouth Site in Ohio, filed an amended federal court complaint last week against contractors he claims violated the Price Anderson Act and caused his acute myeloid leukemia.
Joshua Shaw, now in his early 50s, was diagnosed with leukemia in 2008 and even though now in remission, still suffers from pain, nausea and anxiety, according to the complaint filed March 14.
The illness is a type of cancer that starts in bone marrow and frequently spreads to the blood.
The amended complaint says cancer caused by radiation can take years to develop and Shaw assumed past and present Portsmouth contractors complied with safety regulations and prevented off-site contamination.
“Similarly, Plaintiff did not know, nor should he have known by exercising reasonable diligence that he had ever been exposed to radionuclides from PORTS, let alone at doses sufficient to cause bodily injury of any kind,” according to the complaint. This is because “exposure and dose can only be established by complex, costly and time-consuming expert testing and analysis well beyond the means or abilities of an ordinary person.”
The week prior to Shaw’s amended complaint, the group of current and former Portsmouth contractors asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio to throw out Shaw’s case, partly for failure to state a claim.
Reports by DOE, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency show “multiple” releases of contamination into the air, water and soil, over time, according to Shaw’s complaint.
The counties surrounding the Portsmouth plant, “namely Pike, Scioto, Vinton, Adams, and Lawrence Counties, are among those having the highest cancer rates in Ohio,” according to the complaint.
Shaw is one of several locals who have sued Portsmouth contractors after Zahn’s Corner Middle School closed in May 2019 after enriched uranium was detected inside the building, according to the complaint.
Defendants are Bechtel Jacobs Company, BWXT Conversion Services, Centrus Energy, Fluor-BWXT Portsmouth, LATA/Parallax Portsmouth, Mid-America Conversion Services, United States Enrichment Corporation and Uranium Disposition Services.
