Missouri chief medical officer sounds alarm about radioactive waste at legislative hearing

https://missouriindependent.com/2024/10/16/missouri-chief-medical-officer-
sounds-alarm-about-radioactive-waste-at-legislative-hearing/

Missouri’s chief medical officer on Tuesday said the state needs to raise 
awareness among physicians about the prevalence of radioactive 
contamination in the St. Louis area to catch rare cancers.

Dr. Heidi Miller, who last year was named the Missouri Department of 
Health and Senior Service’s first chief medical officer, spoke to an 
interim committee of Missouri House members studying St. Louis’ long 
history of contamination from World War II-era radioactive waste. 

“I’m as alarmed as you are,” Miller told the committee.

Miller, who has worked with nonprofit health-care agencies and is a 
primary care physician, said she once had a patient with rare appendix 
cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. In 25 years practicing medicine, she’d 
never seen appendiceal cancer. 

“I understand that there are rare, awful things happening,” Miller said. 
“We need to raise our awareness for that, and we need to study it in order 
to figure out what to do about it.” 

Miller’s remarks came during a four-hour inaugural meeting of the Missouri 
House Special Interim Committee to Address Health and Environmental Impact 
of Nuclear Weapons Work.

Chaired by Rep. Tricia Byrnes, a Wentzville Republican, the committee is 
tasked with studying St. Louis’ long-running radioactive waste problem, 
collecting testimony from the community and recommending legislation for 
consideration by the Missouri General Assembly when it reconvenes in 
January.

The committee’s first hearing included testimony from the U.S. Army Corps 
of Engineers, Missouri Department of Natural Resources and Missouri 
Department of Health and Senior Services — along with some affected 
members of the community.

Byrnes, who swam in a contaminated quarry as a teen and whose son suffered 
through a rare cancer, said it was beneficial for lawmakers to get to 
question state agencies outside the time constraints of the regular 
legislative session. She noted legislators can’t compel action by state 
agencies, which are part of the executive branch. 

“But with a committee,” Byrnes said, “we can compel follow-up workshops, 
follow-up reports…This is a great format to say Missouri has a problem 
here, and we need everyone to come together on what we should do next.”

The St. Louis area was pivotal to the development of the atomic bomb in 
the 1940s and is still grappling with radioactive waste almost 80 years 
after the U.S. dropped the weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. 

During the Manhattan Project, the name given to the World War II-era 
effort to create the world’s first nuclear weapons, uranium was refined in 
downtown St. Louis. 

After the war, waste from that effort was trucked to parts of St. Louis 
and St. Charles counties and dumped in a quarry along the Missouri River 
and in heaps on the ground. From there, leaking barrels of radioactive 
material contaminated Coldwater Creek, a tributary of the Missouri River 
that runs through now-busy suburbs.

In 2019, the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry 
found that exposure to Coldwater Creek increased the risk of developing 
cancer for children who lived near or played in the creek.

One of those kids who grew up playing in the creek in the 1970s and 1980s 
is Kim Visintine, whose son was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor as a 
newborn. He died at six years old. 

And while Visintine attributes her son’s death to Coldwater Creek, she 
said research can miss cancer clusters because the illness is reported 
according to the patient’s place of residence at the time they are 
diagnosed. Her family wasn’t living near Coldwater Creek by the time her 
son was born. And classmates of hers who suffered illnesses they believe 
came because of exposure to the creek had also moved away. 

Visintine and peers who lived along Coldwater Creek and lost loved ones 
pushed state and federal agencies until the 2019 study took a closer look 
at the cancer rates around the creek. 

Visintine said she hopes to see Missouri added to the Radiation Exposure 
Compensation Act, a federal program that, for more than 30 years, 
compensated miners and individuals exposed to radiation from nuclear bomb 
testing in the southwest. Lawmakers are trying to expand it to more 
states, including Missouri, but in the meantime, it has lapsed.

The important part of joining RECA, Visintine said, is gaining access to a 
federal screening program for radiation-related illnesses. With screening, 
Visintine said, maybe illnesses would be caught early before they become 
terminal.

“At the end of the day, we have to help the folks that have been exposed,” 
she said, “and the way to do that is to keep them from getting the 
terminal diagnosis.” 

While Byrnes said she intended for the meeting to feature more members of 
the community, the committee was learning so much from the testimony of 
state and federal agencies that those officials spoke for the bulk of the 
four-hour meeting. 

Ashley Bernaugh was president of the Jana Elementary School Parent Teacher 
Association when a researcher found radioactive contamination inside the 
school. She expected to speak Tuesday, but the committee ran out of time. 

“I do hope that there will be a follow up that will center community voice 
on another day,” she said, “but the testimony was absolutely necessary. We 
do need those folks on the record.”

Rep. Doug Clemens, a Democrat from St. Ann, does not sit on the committee 
but attended Tuesday’s meeting. He said he knew some members of the 
community were upset they didn’t get to speak.

Tuesday’s meeting, he said, didn’t get into the “nitty gritty” of 
contaminated sites in Missouri but provided a good introduction to the 
issue. 

“There are people in harm’s way every day because of this in Missouri,” he 
said. “It’s intolerable. It’s unacceptable.”


-- 
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump.  We look 
forward to America being great again.

The disease known as Kamala Harris has been effectively treated and 
eradicated.

We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that 
stupid people won't be offended.

Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem.  It has none.

Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden 
fiasco, President Trump.  

Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the 
The World According To Garp.  Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood 
queer liberal democrat donors.