[R-G] Much Ado about A Lot: Uranium Mining in Canada

[Anthony Fenton]

Much Ado about A Lot: Uranium Mining in Canada
by Lia Tarachansky
	
October 15, 2007
MR Zine
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/tarachansky131007.html

Opposition to uranium mining has once again become a major topic of  
coverage by the media.  From Australia to Canada, people are taking a  
stand against corporations that mine uranium and in particular  
against their mining on Native land.  Today, the Ardoch and Shabot  
blockade brings attention to the potential uranium mine opening  
between Kingston and Ottawa.  To make it clearer why so many are  
objecting to the mining of uranium, I have decided to investigate why  
so many are mining it in the first place.

Processed uranium is used for nuclear energy and weapons.  Previously  
it was recycled, largely from old Soviet nuclear weapons.  This  
source has now run out and in recent years the price of uranium  
skyrocketed from $7 to $145 per pound, according to the Colorado  
Springs Business Journal.  In North America, U.S. uranium mining is  
concentrated in Colorado while Canadian mining in northern  
Saskatchewan and Ontario.  Its processing, called "enrichment,"  
leaves behind a depleted form of uranium (DU), used both for military  
and non-military (civilian) purposes.  These include anti-tank  
artillery and coating of medical equipment such as x-ray and gamma  
radiation technology.  The American military used DU in Iraq, the  
Former Republic of Yugoslavia, and in Afghanistan releasing close to  
900 tones into the environment.

The radioactive toxicity of weapons-grade and energy-grade uranium  
has now seeped into common knowledge.  Beyond radioactivity, though,  
uranium has enormous impacts on human health and has faced brutal  
criticism from the scientific community.  Similar criticism was given  
to the disposal and the processing of uranium.  Nonetheless, little  
media and government attention has been given to the effects of  
uranium mining in particular.

While decaying, uranium emits alpha, beta, and gamma radiation.  When  
this radiation enters the body it lead to an increased risk of  
cancers, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency  
(EPA).  By releasing this radiation, uranium decomposes, but so  
slowly that it takes over 760 million years to half in size.  With a  
footprint like that, the effects of its mining, processing, use, and  
disposal have an unfathomable and effectively permanent impact on all  
life.

Unlike popular belief, uranium is mostly dangerous in its gross form,  
not because of its radioactivity.  Once it or its depleted form enter  
the body through airways or the digestive tract, a number of harmful  
medical effects begin.  In fact, visualizing this is easiest at sites  
of uranium mining, as miners are directly exposed to the resulting  
silica dust, and residents in areas neighboring the mines are exposed  
to contamination from the pollution of their water or air.   
"Aboriginal communities suffer very distinctly from the mining  
because they are remote from urban centres and experience the effects  
firsthand," informed me Marlene Laroque of the National Aboriginal  
Health Organization.  "These communities don't have as many resources  
as urban centres do to clean up the pollution."

Because of the location of the mines, there have been a  
disproportionate number of aboriginal workers as compared to those in  
other industries.  Aboriginal communities are not only the ones  
suffering the brunt of the damage, but are also demonstrative of the  
significance of the effects.  Navajo Aboriginals in the U.S. for  
example historically had a significantly low incidence of lung  
cancers.  In their population the skyrocketing of lung cancers in  
uranium miners of the 1950s really brought home the point.  Further,  
a 1949 discovery in the United States linked the elevated lung cancer  
rates with inhaled radon gas particles.  This, though, did not push  
the government to create regulations or impose bans on the mining  
industry even though studies have been demonstrating these results  
since the 1920s and 1930s.  Over 20% of the miners in that period  
were Navajos as are Métis in Canada today.

Along with the environmental pollution that ensues, social and  
political effects follow.  This is especially true of aboriginal  
communities as their lives are more directly linked with nature.   
According to Marlene Laroque, this means that their lives are  
directly impacted by resource extraction.  [The corporations] "clear- 
cut for roads, and go into lakes and rivers.  This leads to  
degradation of the traditional living and hunting territories because  
the food supply is contaminated and access is limited."

The food cycle leads to people internalizing the extracted compounds  
through consuming contaminated fish or game.  Once inside the body,  
uranium changes physiology beginning with kidney damage (termed  
"nephrotoxicity").  Medically it works something like this: a toxic  
substance enters the body, the body tries to get rid of the  
substance, and the body's drainage system becomes disrupted and  
clogged up.  In the case of uranium mining, this substance is often  
radon, a byproduct of the mining itself.  Radon has a long ugly  
history in medical research for causing multiple myelomas: otherwise  
called Kahler's Disease.  Here, immune cells of the bone marrow,  
normally producing antibodies, become cancerous. 1  The effect of  
this, according to the Canadian Cancer Society, is infection of  
organs, weakness, confusion, bone pain, anemia, and potential loss of  
bowel or bladder control.  Other symptoms are carpal tunnel,  
diseasing of the body's nerves, and leukemia. 2

When dust produced from mining uranium is inhaled the first impacted  
organ is the lung.  Cancerous effects are particularly significant  
here because cells reproduce often and continuously.  Interrupting  
this delicate balance means cells begin forming tumors, which  
explains the high level of lung cancers among uranium miners. 3 Other  
organs demonstrating elevated cancers in uranium miners are  
gallbladder and bile duct. 4

Studies on animals have been confirming the human trends.  Multiple  
international laboratories have shown that uranium builds up in the  
brain. 5  This buildup leads to the brain's chemical messengers,  
thanks to which the brain gets thrown completely out of balance.

Other studies, such as that performed by Spanish scientists of the  
Rovira i Virgili University confirmed others' results.  Their  
experiment on rats has shown not only the previously studied kidney  
damage but also that uranium disrupts the chemical balance of the  
body. 6  An interesting outcome of their research is not only  
confirmation of almost 90 years of scientific inquiry but their  
discovery of melatonin as treatment for uranium toxicity.  Though  
remarkable, it is a band-aid solution that reduces kidney damage in  
rats exposed to contaminated water but fails to restore the chemical  
balance disrupted in the first place.  This damage is irreparable.

Also worrisome is contamination passed through water.  A contaminated  
water-well in rural Northwestern Connecticut from which young  
children had accidentally drunk.  Levels of uranium in the water were  
measured to be almost 40 times higher than the EPA classifies as  
toxic.  Some children took over 3 months to recover. 7

Colorado's Navahos have spearheaded resistance against such  
pollutions.  The only tangible reprieve for their suffering came in  
1952 when the Atomic Energy Commission recommended mining  
ventilation, but it has done nothing to pressure corporations to  
obey.  Ventilation of uranium mines only begun in 1967 at Union  
Carbide and did not become universal as even the government agencies  
claimed it was too costly.  Legal battles took decades to resolve.   
Some of these include lawsuits against the Nuclear Regulatory  
Commissions for its neglect of the miners' health despite its  
knowledge of the danger of their occupational exposure.  For  
consolation, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act was created,  
which allocated $100,000 to each of the miners' families.  This  
caused a temporary drawdown in Colorado's uranium mining industry and  
shifted some of the production to Canada.  According to Natural  
Resources Canada, we now produce 29% of the world's uranium.

The growth of the Canadian industry is a response to commercial  
profit-making opportunities.  A decrease in supply plus an increase  
in demand equals higher prices.  In the face of the horrendous,  
effectively permanent destructiveness to current and future  
generations, the continual extraction of uranium is dumbfounding.  It  
is a demonstration of the corporate world's war against nature and  
marginalized communities.  This war, destructive to all communities,  
is exemplified by a classist separation between those who benefit  
from uranium mining, the corporations, and those who significantly  
suffer from it, the working class and aboriginal communities.  From  
Russia to China, Australia to Canada, uranium is mined globally, and  
its impact on the world accumulates.  In response to this, the  
struggle of those who dare to rise up against all odds is to be  
celebrated and supported.

The resistance must spread faster than the pollution.

1   L. Tomasek, E. Kunz, S.C. Darby, A. J. Swerdlow, V. Placek,  
";Radon Exposure and Cancers Other than Lung Cancer among Uranium  
Miners in West Bohemia," The Lancet 341.8850 (April 1993), pp. 919-923.
2   Ibid.
3   A. V. Malashenko, "The Lung Cancer in the Uranium Miners of  
Sedimentary Deposits," Meditsinskaya Radiologiya i Radiatsionnaya  
Bezolasnost 60.6 (2005), pp. 10-12.
4   Tomasek, et al., op. cit.
5   V. Linares, D. J. Sanchez, M. Belles, L. Albine, M. Gomez, J. K.  
Domingo, ";Pro-oxidant Effects in the Brain of Rats Concurrently  
Exposed to Uranium and Stress," Toxicology Journal 236.1-2 (July  
2007), pp. 82-91.
6   M. Belles, V. Linares, M. Luisa-Albina, J. Sirvent, D. Sanchez,  
and J.L. Domingo, ";Melatonin Reduces Uranium Induced Nephrotoxicity  
in Rats," Journal of Pineal Research 43.1 (August 2007), pp.87-95
7   H.S. Magdo, J. Forman, N. Graber, B. Newman, K. Klein, L. Satlin,  
R. W. Amler, J. A. Winston, P. J. Landrigan, ";Grand Rounds:  
Nephrotoxicity in a Young Child Exposed to Uranium from Contaminated  
Well-Water," Environmental Health Perspectives 115. 8 (August 2007),  
pp.1237-41.