Canyon officials hope to squash radiation rumors

FLAGSTAFF — Grand Canyon National Park officials hope they have finally put to rest a long-standing rumor that the athletic fields where local children play were contaminated with radiation.

For years, people in the area speculated that uranium mining waste was used to construct the athletic fields at the park's high school. Park officials never had found anything to substantiate the rumor, but they wanted to assure the community there was no health risk.

The results of a radiological survey released Wednesday found that radiation levels at the fields aren't elevated and there's no indication of uranium mining waste in the soils under the fields.

"There wasn't any waste dumped there, and this survey proves that," said park spokeswoman Maureen Oltrogge. "There were only rumors about that occurring."

No one seems to know how the rumor got started.

Grand Canyon Unified School District Superintendent Sheila Breen first heard it from a maintenance director at the high school. From there, it came up at community forums, when someone got diagnosed with cancer, and she's brought it up in conversations with Grand Canyon officials.

The district had conducted informal tests of the fields with a Geiger counter and didn't find anything to worry about, she said.

Still, the rumor persisted.

"Anytime anyone gets sick, even if they just moved here, it seems like it ties back to, 'I wonder if it's that uranium thing?'" she said.

Residents speculated that the Orphan Mine on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, just miles from the school, was the likely source of uranium-bearing rock. The mining operation ceased in 1969, and the park service now is working to clean it up.

Stacey Hamburg, conservation program manager for the Sierra Club, said it's still unknown where waste from the mine went.

Grand Canyon park officials were intent on proving it didn't go to the athletic fields. For four days last year, investigators took nearly 28,850 gamma radiation measurements from surface locations and radium concentration measurements for soil were collected at 200 locations.

They found the radiation levels weren't statistically different from background concentrations in the area and there's no public health risk.

"The statistics on it are quite tight, and I do hope this will put it to rest," said Greg Nottingham, an environmental protection specialist for the National Park Service.

___

On the Net:

Grand Canyon National Park: http://www.nps.gov/grca/