In news reminiscent of disclosure of radioactive contamination found at a school bordering the Department of Energy’s Piketon Site in Ohio, a citizens group in Missouri is citing a report of high levels of thorium and radium contamination on school grounds near a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers cleanup site at the St. Louis Airport.
A review of sampling and testing done in August around Jana Elementary School in Florissant, Mo., by researchers at Boston Chemical Data found radioactive contamination above Environmental Protection Agency cleanup standards. That’s according to a report posted on the Missouri Coalition for the Environment website.
Jana Elementary School is within the flood plain of the Army Corps Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program cleanup for Coldwater Creek. The Atomic Energy Commission and the Manhattan Engineer District bought a 22-acre site nearby that was used in the 1940s and 1950s to hold scrap and residues from uranium processing at the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in downtown St. Louis, according to an Army Corps fact sheet.
The Oct. 10 Boston Chemical Data report was featured in a Sunday article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper. According to the report, Army Corps testing showed radioactivity well in excess of picocuries per gram that the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe for human health.
Similar earlier testing from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “demonstrates that radiological contamination exists at unacceptable levels,” according to the report. The Boston Chemical Data work was led by civil engineer Marco Kaltofen, PhD, and geologist Brian Moore of Carriage House Consulting.
“The Boston Chemical Data Corp. report is not consistent with our accepted evaluation techniques and must be thoroughly vetted to ensure accuracy,” said Phil Moser, program manager for the Army Corps St. Louis District Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program. In an emailed statement Monday to Exchange Monitor, Moser said the Corps remains committed to cleaning up the sites around North St. Louis.
The Jana Elementary School property does have formerly utilized defense site contamination near the bank of the creek “that is below ground surface and in a densely wooded area,” Moser said. If the Corps’ ongoing sampling turns up any contamination posing an immediate risk to human health or the environment it “would be made a priority for remediation.”
Local residents have been concerned about Coldwater Creek area contamination for years. “The Army Corps first detected radioactive thorium near the school in 2018,” and that finding was backed up by subsequent tests in 2019-2021, according to the report.
The Missouri Coalition for the Environment has teamed up with Just Moms STL to create the STL Toxic Waste Alliance for the St. Louis area, according to the Missouri Coalition website. A page on the group’s website includes a history of radioactive material stemming from St. Louis’s role in the Manhattan Project.
