Occupational Health effects of Uranium Mining
Uranium threatens
the health of mine workers and the communities surrounding the mines.
According to the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear
War, uranium mining has been responsible for the largest collective
exposure of workers to radiation. One estimate puts the number of
workers who have died of lung cancer and silicosis due to mining and
milling alone at 20,000.
Mine
workers are principally exposed to ionising radiation from radioactive
uranium and the accompanying radium and radon gases emitted from the
ore. Ionising radiation is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum
that extends from ultraviolet radiation to cosmic rays. This type
of radiation releases high energy particles that damage cells and
DNA structure, producing mutations, impairing the immune system and
causing cancers.
Uranium mining companies, including WMC and ERA, claim that they can
minimise the risk to “acceptable levels” by attention to
proper ventilation of the shafts, and close monitoring of workers
to radioactive exposure. However, each time International Commission
for Radiation Protection and other experts/organisations conduct a
review on "safe" levels of radiation exposure, they conclude
that low levels of ionising radiation are more dangerous than was
previously decided. On average, these organisations have concluded
that the actual danger is twice as bad as they thought twelve years
before. This means that people are legally exposed to a certain dose
of radiation one year and the next year they are told that the dose
was far too high.
The new limits mean that the annual risk of death (from cancer) for
a uranium miner is 1 in 1250, which is nearly ten times the risk of
fatal injury in Australian industry generally, which is 1 in 20,000.
Even so the uranium industry has protested that the ICRP's new limits
would be uneconomic for underground mining. In the Roxby mine underground
miners have received up to 30 milliSv a year. The dose limits which
the NHMRC has adopted permit a health risk which is clearly unacceptable.
It is widely agreed in the scientific community that there is no safe
level of radiation exposure. Because it can take more than twenty
or more years for cancer produced by low levels of ionising radiation
to become apparent, it is not easy to trace the cause. It is imperative
that long term medical records be kept of all workers, residents and
their children, including those conceived after leaving Olympic Dam
and Ranger, and yet this is not being done.
At present there is no independent monitoring of the Roxby Downs or
Jabiru communities. We are the only 'developed' nation which has no
such monitoring system in place. In twenty years time, when the health
effects of uranium are emerging, the people will be left to pick up
the costs, just like the asbestos mining communities before them.
References
Information
by the Medical Association for the Prevention of War (WA) and the
MAUM public education sheet on Ionising Radiation And Health.
