March 1, 2008
Hon.Tony Clement
Minister of Health
Health Canada
Cc Linda Thompson, Mayor, Municipality of Port Hope,
Ontario
Michael Binder, President, Canada Nuclear Safety Commission
Hon Gary Lund, Minister of Natural Resources Canada
For information: Hon. Sheila Frazer, Auditor General of Canada
Topic: Uranium contamination, Port Hope, Ontario
Dear Mr. Clement:
November 13, 2007, Uranium Medical Research Centre, Inc released
laboratory results of assays of uranium measured in the 24-hour
urine specimens of nine (9) representative residents and former
nuclear workers in Port Hope, Ontario.
The Port Hope findings and methodology was peer reviewed at
the European Association of Nuclear Medicine’s 2007 Annual
Congress, August, 2007. The lab study was conducted at world
leading radioisotope laboratory, Johannes Goethe Institute of
Geochemistry and Petrology, University of Frankfurt, Germany.
The urines of the nine Port Hope residents and former nuclear
workers revealed all study subjects’ bodies to be contaminated
by unnatural species of uranium. Neither Health Canada, the
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Natural Resources Canada,
Ontario Public Health, nor the Provincial or Federal Departments
of Environment list these uranium species as present in Port
Hope or as potential contaminates to the residents and workers
there. No environmental, biological or radiological study has
previously identified these species of uranium in any jurisdiction
in Canada.
What
the Port Hope radiobiological study found
Three
former nuclear workers’ urines contains the artificial
uranium isotope, 236U. This isotope of uranium is a manmade
component of recycled nuclear reactor, spent fuel. Measurable
quantities of 236U were found in the urine of one workers after
a 23 year elapsed time frame since direct exposure in a nuclear
processing facility.
One worker’s urine contains Depleted Uranium (DU), the
“tails” of uranium enrichment process. Canada does
not enrich uranium although the record shows the Canada Defense
Establishment, Royal Military College and Cameco have imported
DU for US weapons testing and to produce components for US anti-amour
DU munitions.
All nine subject’s (i.e. former workers, both male and
female adults, and one child) urines contain an elevated signature
of the uranium isotope, 234U. The elevated 234U is a forensic
signature of “down-blended” or recycled, enriched
uranium. No public documents can be found indicating enriched
uranium is a licensed product of the Port Hope nuclear facilities
(although CNSC recently stated it licensed Zircatec to use enriched
uranium for experimental purposes).
The total uranium (i.e. concentrations) in the study subjects
varied; from within the range of the average of the study’s
Controls up to 2.2 times (220%) higher for a 14 year old boy
and 6.5 times (650%) for a former nuclear worker who has not
been directly exposed to a processing facility for 11 years.
The profiles of the contaminants indicate that “dirty uranium”
(most likely imported from the United States) has been processed
in Port Hope. This is not revealed in Natural Resources Canada’s
public documents associated with radioactive waste in Port Hope
or any CNSC regulatory documents.
The findings demonstrate that emissions from the nuclear plants
contain isotopes that are different in chemistry, form and radioactivity
than the primary isotopes licensed to Cameco and Zircatec.
The findings also show that the contaminates in workers and
residents bodies are substantially different in form and biokinetics
(internal radiation effects) from the species of uranium Health
Canada and CNSC use to base the legal allowable radiation dose
thresholds for Port Hope.
UMRC’s laboratory mass spectrometry findings have been
acknowledged in public forums as accurate by Cameco, Health
Canada and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. At CNSC’s
Public Hearing, January 9, 2008, Oshawa, Ontario, and a Cameco
organized community meeting, Cameco’s Andrew Oliver, Vice
President, Fuel Services Division, acknowledged the materials
UMRC found in the biological samples have been processed in
Port Hope.
At the January 9, 2008 hearing, Chris Clement, Director of Radiation
Protection Division, CNSC, admitted to anonymously co-authoring
with Jack Cornet, Director, Radiation Protection Branch, Health
Canada’s December 20, 2007 statement to the Port Hope Town
Council and local press. In that statement, posted on the Port
Hope town website, you dismiss all possible medical significance
of the findings.
Health
Canada states unambiguous falsehood to the people of Port Hope
and Members of Parliament
Upon request from the Port Hope Town Council and concerned members
of Parliament, Jack Cornett and Health Canada made public statements
intended to dismiss the medical significance of the Port Hope
findings. In doing so, Jack Cornett and Health Canada stated
an unambiguous medical and scientific falsehood. In its December
20, 2007 statement to the Port Hope Town Council and local press,
your Department states that the industrial commercial uranium
contaminants and species of radioactive materials found by UMRC
in the bodies of Port Hope former nuclear workers and residents
are “typical for Canadians”.
On January 21, 2008, correspondence to the Mayor of Port Hope,
on the Minister’s letterhead, repeated the same falsehood:
“all the [uranium]levels are low and typical of the range
in normal background values in individual Canadians”; and,
“regardless of whether the uranium was natural or included
artificial materials”, the “highest reported uranium
value … is only a fraction of the public dose limit.”
Your department, in cooperation with the CNSC, and recently
joined by Port Hope’s “peer reviewer”, Dr. Murray
Finkelstein, an Occupational Health consultant employed by the
Ontario Ministry of Labour, state a public position which you
cannot substantiate scientifically: you are on public record
as telling Port Hope and members of Parliament stating the contaminants
found in the bodies of the nine Port Hope subjects are not a
health concern.
Health
Canada, CNSC and Dr Finkelstein are in error
Dr Finkelstein’s critique is based on his stated assumption
that the radioactive materials UMRC found in the lab are a “soluble”
species of uranium”. From this point forward, Dr Finkelstein’s
analysis is incorrect as he erroneously categorized the contaminants’
physical-chemical form. By misunderstanding the uranium species,
Dr Finkelstein bases his critique on inaccurate biological and
medical assumptions; discussing an entirely different species
of uranium with a different metabolic life cycle (i.e. biological
half-life) than the contaminants UMRC found in bodies of the
Port Hope subjects.
Health Canada does not have the Port Hope study subjects’
medical and exposure history information needed to calculate
radiation doses. Director Cornett has categorically misinformed
the Municipality of Port Hope. He stated that Health Canada
contacted UMRC for detailed study information. No such contact
was received. The Minister may have been mislead into a belief
that radiation dose can be calculated from the quantity of the
uranium in the urine. This indicates Health Canada has also,
like Dr Finkelstein, misunderstood the physical-chemistry of
the species of the contaminant found in Port Hope.
Health Canada’s statements to the Port Hope Council, the
press and members of Parliament reveal the department does not
have the expertise to understand the meaning and significance
of UMRC’s findings. Health Canada’s conclusion that
the materials are typical, the dose is below the public dose
limit and that the findings are not medically significant is
erroneous and irresponsible. Health Canada and its co-author,
the CNSC are out of their technical depth. You have ignored
significant radiological data about human contamination that
at the least needs to be investigated with comprehensive multidisciplinary
studies.
Health Canada dismisses the radiation dose from the material
found in the study based on the quantities of the uranium measured
in the subjects’ urines. This is a fundamental error. Insoluble
uranium, inhaled and incorporated into the body’s tissues,
bones and organs takes years to decades to be released from
tissue and possibly cleared from the body. The quantities of
the industrial contaminants measured in the Port Hope subjects
are “tracers”; they reveal much larger quantities
of these materials remaining incorporated into the study subjects’
bodies.
Uranium is an “alpha particle” emitter. Alpha particles
are the heaviest and most damaging of all forms of ionizing
radiation. Uranium’s radiation is 20 times more damaging
(i.e. an RBE - relative biological effectiveness - of 20) than
the gamma radiation monitored by Health Canada in Port Hope.
Alpha radiation damages the genetic coding structure of cells,
called DNA; alpha radiation damages the most vital of all repair
and tissue building cells, the Stem cells; and, it damages vital
organ tissues in the heart, lungs, liver, lymphatic system,
the kidneys and the central nervous system, all at a sub-microscopic
scale. Alpha radiation is classified by the International Agency
for Research in cancer, a United Nation’s agency, as a
Class 1 carcinogen.
100 times the legal dose for civilians
When microscopic fragments of uranium are inhaled, they become
deposited in internal organs and bones. The alpha radiation
particles emitted by the uranium travel very short distances
and affect very small and discrete volumes of tissue. Each time
an atom in a uranium fragment decays, it delivers up to 4.9
MeV (million electron volts) of energy to surrounding cells
and tissues.
An average sized, inhaled, 2.5 micron fragment of uranium delivers
170 REM of radiation per year to the tissue surrounding
it. One averaged sized uranium oxide fragment inhaled into the
body emits 34 times the permitted annual dose for radiation
workers and a dose 100 times higher than the legally allowed
annual dose limit for the Canadian population.
The physical form of the contaminants UMRC identified in Port
Hope have life cycles in the subjects’ bodies of years
to decades. That means that the material accumulates daily and
builds up a reserve of the contaminant faster that it can be
eliminated, resulting in a steadily increasing amount of Alpha
radiation assaults at the cellular level many times greater
than the legally allowable limit.
UMRC rejects Health Canada’s (coauthored by CNSC) and the
Municipality’s peer reviewer’s conclusions on the
Port Hope findings. You have made scientific errors and public
statements misinforming the public about the study and its implications.
Health Canada and the nuclear regulator, CNSC, demonstrate they
do not understand the medical effects and biological facts regarding
the radiation dose of the newly identified, internally deposited
uranium species found in Port Hope by UMRC. If Health Canada
understood the Port Hope findings, it would be celebrating this
study as a significant Canadian scientific and medical accomplishment:
measuring human contamination by industrial radiotoxins at femtogram
quantities (i.e. parts per quadrillion; 1 fg = 1e-18 kg), decades
after exposure.
UMRC welcomes any opportunity to bring its experts to face Health
Canada’s, CNSC’s and the Port Hope peer review team’s
experts. UMRC is confident a repeat of the Port Hope study (using
the same parameters and a reliable lab) will reveal exactly
the same pattern of contamination on the same or a new study
group; and invites Health Canada to implement its Director of
Radiation Protection, Jack Cornett’s statement to the Municipality
of Port Hope that there is a need to independently repeat the
research.
Sincerely:
Edward (Tedd) C. Weyman
Deputy Director
Uranium Medical Research Centre
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