It should take anywhere from two to four weeks to fully analyze the Energy Department’s new sampling for radioactive contaminants at a middle school near the Portsmouth Site in Ohio.
The results should be publicly provided as soon as they are available, Pike County Health Commissioner Matt Brewster said in a Wednesday email.
A team of certified health physicists from DOE national laboratories collected samples over a nine-hour period Saturday. The Energy Department took 44 smear or wipe samples from surfaces inside the school, along with air samples from around the school, he said. No soil or water samples were taken.
The Energy Department team originally planned to collect samples from desks, tabletops, and floors at Zahn’s Corner Middle School, “which have been cleaned almost daily since August,” Brewster said. But officials with the Pike County General Health District and Scioto Valley Local School District insisted they focus more on “undisturbed” locations in ceilings, the heating-cooling system, and I-beams, he added.
The school, 2 miles from the former gaseous diffusion plant, closed May 13, a week ahead of the planned summer break, after an April analysis by Northern Arizona University indicated the presence of enriched uranium and neptunium-237. Prior DOE sampling found only trace amounts of radioactive contaminants, which the agency says are well below levels that would pose a risk to health.
The Energy Department, Pike County health district, and the Ohio Department of Health will each have separate labs analyze the new samples. The Energy Department is using the Savannah River National Laboratory in South Carolina, while Northern Arizona University will again assist Pike County, Brewster said.
Aside from the Memorial Day weekend sampling, the Energy Department has agreed to pay for a third-party consultant picked by Pike County to conduct independent sampling and analysis. The consultant should be selected soon, Brewster said.
The local health officials want to assess the safety of the school and properties around Portsmouth, and to determine the possible source of any contamination, Brewster said. The county is also inquiring about having a potential cancer study conducted by the state or the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant operated from 1954 to 2001, enrichment uranium first for nuclear defense and later for commercial power plants. The Energy Department started remediation work in 1989.
Local officials in Pike County have already decided to house the students from Zahn’s Corner at two other schools for the 2019-2020 school year, the health commissioner noted. School officials announced the decision May 24, saying they wanted to give parents and teachers time to plan schedules and logistics.
Energy Secretary Rick Perry said May 20 his agency would release “raw air monitoring data” for each of its 16 sampling locations for the Portsmouth Site for 2015 through the first quarter of 2019. “This provides a more complete picture of the information we have,” he stated in a letter to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine. Much of the data has already been provided to state officials, Perry said.
The DOE’s 2017 Annual Site Environmental Report for Portsmouth was publicly release in January. In 2017, trace amounts of neptunium-237 were detected through two of the agency’s ambient air monitoring stations near the Portsmouth Site. The 2018 data analyzed so far detects no evidence of neptunium-237, according to DOE.
“According to the report from our federal partners at the U.S. Department of Energy, there does not appear to be any immediate health concerns in Pike County,” Ohio Department of Health spokesman J.C. Benton said Tuesday. “However, we want additional verification to ensure the health and safety of the community and fully support a third-party review.”
