Some Feared for Health of Ore Handlers
Uranium-processing workers on the night shift filed into the lunchroom at the Mallinckrodt Chemical Works in north St. Louis for one of Mont Mason’s lectures on the safe handling of nuclear materials. Mason, just two years out of the Marine Corps, sized up his audience. Most were in their 20s, and they were cutting up and cracking jokes like bad…
Building a Mountain of Radioactive Waste
In the summer of 1966, Leo Vasquez, 13, and his friends run out and pick up the yellow dirt that falls from trucks lumbering past his family’s farmhouse north of Lambert Field. The youngsters take the dirt and swirl it in water. They are panning for gold. Every six minutes or so, a truck rumbles east on Frost Avenue headed for Latty Avenue from…
A Miracle With A Price
Part 1 in a 7 part series published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from February 12-19, 1989. The special series unlocked the secrets behind radioactive waste in St. Louis and took months of effort by three Post Dispatch reporters – Carolyn Bower, Louis J. Rose and Theresa Tighe. The series was called "Legacy Of The Bomb – St. Louis Nuclear Waste" and what came out of their investigation was a graphic picture of how waste was generated, how it was spread haphazardly throught the area, the difficulty in cleaning it up and the lingering confusion over how hazardous it really is.