Cancer, genetic defects
are uranium’s legacy
An interview with Dr. David Maxwell
UPdate Fall 2008

Barb Harris from UPdate spoke with Dr. David Maxwell, a NS physician who believes uranium mining creates unacceptable health hazards for the population. Dr. Maxwell is a retired professor of Family Medicine and Emergency Medicine at Dalhousie University, and spent many years as an emergency medicine physician at the QE 11 Hospital in Halifax, NS.

UPdate: What makes uranium mining different from other types of mining?

DM: The fundamental difference is the creation of very, very long lasting piles of radioactive material. Once you have released radon from the rock, it is going to be released continuously for tens of thousands of years, and you can’t stop it. There is no way to put the genie back into the bottle.

When it is locked in the rock, the radon remains in the rock and doesn’t do any harm. Once you have crushed the rock up into fine sand, the radon can escape into the atmosphere and will. There is no way to stop it.

Once its in the atmosphere, it drifts variable distances depending on how strong the wind is, and in the next three and a half days it turns into polonium 218, and these radioactive materials then end up in the environment. They are washed out of the atmosphere in the rain, they are taken up in the vegetation, and the animals that eat the vegetation accumulate these products.

UPdate: What are some of the health effects of exposure to these radioactive particles?

DM: Radioactivity damages cells, and there is no safe level of radiation. Radon is one of the breakdown products of uranium. Radon is a gas, you inhale it, you breathe it into your lungs. The daughter products of radon 222 are deposited in the lung, irradiating the surrounding cells. Lung cancer is what you get from radon. You can also get other cancers from the other radioactive materials which are present. The thorium, polonium 219 and radium clearly are dangerous to you.

The other thing that radiation exposure does is interfere with the gene pool. You cause chromosome breaks, which cause genetic defects, pregnancy losses, lowered fertility and all the things that happen when you disrupt people’s genetic makeup.

Pregnancy losses, lowered fertility and birth defects are all due to chromosome breaks, and the chromosome breaks are very well studied. There is a considerable body of literature documenting the chromosome abnormalities.

Uranium itself also has estrogenic effects. It is an endocrine disrupter. This is completely separate from its radioactivity. Uranium is the heaviest of the heavy metals essentially, so it has the same sorts of effects as any other of the heavy metals. If you ingest it, it causes heavy metal poisoning, Most of the heavy metals actually cause neurologic damage or endocrine damage. Lead is bad for you, arsenic is bad for you -- so is uranium.

UPdate: You’ve explained that radioactivity is released into the air, and becomes part of the surrounding environment. Can it also contaminate water supplies in surrounding areas?

DM: My feeling is that it is absolutely inevitable that if you have a huge lake full of radioactive mud -- which you get when you dig up the solid rock in which everything is neatly stored and you grind it up into a fine powder, and mix it with water and put it in a big pond -- that it is idiotic to say its going to stay in that pond for the next 10,000 years. It is going to leach down into the water table and get distributed. It will travel as far as water travels, as far the water table extends. If you drill a well into that accumulation of water, you’ll get the stuff that is dissolved in it. The other substance which will be released is arsenic, because the rock that contains uranium also contains arsenic. If you crush it up, you release the arsenic, and it then gets into the water and washes down and contaminates wells

UPdate: I’ve heard mining company representatives say we are already exposed to uranium from our environment so mining would not change anything. Is this true?

DM: The mining companies say, “Uranium is in the environment, and you are being continuously exposed to all these products” That is absolutely true. You are getting what is unavoidable. But when you start mining it and grinding up the rock and distributing this extra radioactivity into the environment, you increase the dose. So you can’t eliminate it, we are exposed to radiation on a continuing basis, and we live in a province that has radioactive material in the soil. But there is no justification for increasing it.
There is no safe level of radiation. It is a linear response. If you double the radiation exposure, you double the cancer risk. It’s as simple as that. And that is what happens when you make a uranium mine, you double your radiation exposure. It doesn’t compute that people feel that the economic benefit of opening a mine justifies the creation of additional lung cancers and genetic defects lasting tens of thousands of years.

UPdate: Why do you, as a physician, feel uranium mining should be banned completely in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick?

DM: The simple approach is that all radiation is bad for you and there is a linear relationship. The more radiation you get, the more cancers you get, the more chromosome breaks you get, the more fertility issues and so on, and, uranium mining releases radioactivity, period. And it does so for tens of thousands of years.

The BC Med Assoc took position against uranium mining. In 1985, Doctors NS took a position against uranium mining. Uranium hasn’t changed in that time.

Basically, as Judge McCleave said, you get jobs for 10 years, but you are left with radioactive waste for 10,000 years. It doesn’t make any rational sense at all.

UPdate, Fall 2008, Environmental Health Association of Nova Scotia

You may also be interested in
Greenwashing Uranium: Nuclear energy is not green energy
www.environmentalhealth.ca/fall08greenwashing.html

Cancer, genetic defects are uranium’s legacy
www.environmentalhealth.ca/fall08legacy.html

Nine Facts You Need to Know about Uranium Mining
www.environmentalhealth.ca/fall08ninefacts.html

Radon: Invisible health threat in the home
www.environmentalhealth.ca/fall08radon.html