Saturday, September 26, 2009

FILMMAKER DAVID BRADBURY: RED DUST DUMP ORIGINATING AT WOOMERA IS GRAVE CONCERN FOR PUBLIC HEALTH (uranium mining)

70 million tonnes per year of radioactive tailings finely pulverised into dust size particles are concerning with dust storms like this one, a frequent occurance!


FILMMAKER DAVID BRADBURY: RED DUST DUMP ORIGINATING AT WOOMERA IS GRAVE CONCERN FOR PUBLIC HEALTH

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Coober Pedy Regional Times

Round two of fierce dust from the Woomera-Roxby Downs area hits Coober Pedy on its way to the east coast of Australia again today !

“70 million tonnes of radioactive tailings to be dumped at the Roxby mine site each year without evidence of dust control is cause for concern”, says David Bradbury

A vigorous front moving across South Australia for the second day this week, with west to southwest winds averaging 60-70 km/h are with damaging wind gusts in excess of 90 km/h are causing grave concerns for public health.

Fierce dust storms which nearly blotted out Sydney has reached New Zealand The accumulation of dust which built momentum as violent winds carried it across Australia, originated at Woomera in the South Australian western desert also the site of the Maralinga Nuclear bomb tests where lethal plutonium from failed cleanup attempts will stay active for a quarter of a million years.

Woomera is also situated next to the BHP Billiton Olympic Dam uranium mine currently hoping to expand its operations.

Filmmaker David Bradbury speaks of concerns of dust storms from South Australian uranium mining areas impacting on the health of Australians.

Academy Award nominated documentary maker David Bradbury has spoken out, raising public concerns of the red dust dumped onto east coast cities this week as concerning with BHP Billiton proposing to turn South Australia’s Olympic Dam uranium mine into an open-cut mine larger than Adelaide.

Minister for Mines and energy, Paul Holloway says that dust is a problem, which will need to be looked into at the Olympic Dam mine.

BHP Billiton have refused to discuss “in public,” an issue which has the potential to effect the health of the entire population of Australia.

The public are also wondering with the proposed life of the mine, where the water will come from to contain radioactive tailings of such magnitude.
David Bradbury is a former ABC trained radio journalist and a respected internationally recognised filmmaker with two Oscar nominations and a host of other prizes to his credit plus broadcasting docos around the world for the last 30 years.

David who has credits of four documentaries on nuclear issues says BHP Billiton’s environmental impact study which reflects that the 70 million tonnes of radioactive tailings to be dumped at the Roxby minesite each year without evidence of dust control, is alarming particularly in light of the growing cancer related illnesses across the country. “We are talking about alpha radiation which these tailings contain and are known to be carcinogenic to humans and animals”, David said.

David’s concern is that with the open-cut mine expansion that BHP Billiton is trying to achieve permission from state and federal governments to go ahead, with radioactive tailings left behind to blow over the heavily populated cities of the rest of Australia.

Bradbury whose humanitarian work had involved raising awareness of the many harmful facets of the uranium process, says “The level of contamination brought to the surface and just dumped there by BHP Billiton every year for the life of the mine – up to 100 years – will be one of the, if not THE most environmentally criminal act of any mining company in the history of Australia”.

“It is not a melodramatic statement when you know what I know of the science of it, the radical impact and triggering of cancers at low levels of radiation once they enter the body and what they do to the human (or for that matter, any species…) once in the cell and its impact on the DNA”, said the filmmaker.

David continues: “This fact is not appreciated by our pollies, or the public health authorities who are behind the eight ball of what scientists without a similar voice in their media in Europe, Japan and Canada have been trying to point out for the last decade and more. We´re living under a false and outdated regimen of what is considered by public health authorities to be ´a safe level of radiation´our human bodies can withstand.

The mainstream media have had the game of misinformation all stitched up in not researching and challenging that which concerns the public on the health of generations to come. The Olympic Dam expansion is a monumental disaster if allowed to go ahead and will wash over the face of Australia forever.
Those tailings are radioactive for 4.5 billion years. Most of the radioactivity in the tailings stays in the fine dust once they extract the copper, gold and uranium.

It is only 1000 kms to Melbourne as the crow flies. 1350 km to Sydney as the wind blows. And that is the direction Easterly – that the prevailing winds blow from Roxby.

Seventy million tonnes each year dug out of the huge hole in the ground and dumped there for the next 100 years once they take out the valuable minerals. Radioactive polonium, thorium, radium, bismuth, radioactive lead…and what uranium they can´t finally extract is all left behind in the tailings and will be just dumped there according to BHPB´s hitherto released plans for ´environmental protection´.

Those radioactive heavy metals (above) are always found in association with uranium, are not commercially viable or of any monetary use to BHP. That is why they just want to dump them at the mine´s surface. Too huge a volume and people´s awareness on scarcity of water such that they will not be able to dump them under water in holding dams as they do now, to leach into the surrounding water table.

Then there is the release of radon gas into the surface of the air when they mine uranium, particularly open cut mine. Radon gas released from the dug up uranium is seven times heavier than air so it does not evaporate into ´space´ but hugs the earth and attaches itself to water molecules (which we or livestock or native animals drink), can be breathed into our lungs like the radioactive dust particles from the tailings thus triggering cancers and birth defects or attaches itself to growing crops and vegetation which we also eat.

Radon gas has a radioactive half life of 3.8 days (when airborne) so in that half life it can easily blow on a light wind of 20 kph to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane etc. People don´t even know they are breathing it in because it is odourless. So the triggering of cancers begins… which doesn´t come out for 20 years or more. And how can you shaft home responsibility to the board of BHP and its CEO then who will be long gone or moved onto greener pastures in that time?

Dust from a South Australian dust storm reaches parts of New Zealand.

In kids radon or radioactive particles inhaled or eaten dust has a rapid impact, with maybe five years to trigger childhood or teen cancers because their cells are dividing more rapidly than adults who have stopped growing.

So the mutations in the cell from either the radioactive dust inhaled, eaten or from the radon gas alpha particle inhalation, ingestion etc precipitates the cancers faster in a child in the womb, young kids or teenagers because the cells are dividing faster and the mutated cells are created and multiply faster in the young.

That´s what cancer is – mutated cells which multiply and form tumours as a result which then take over the body and finally destroy it”.

The South Australian Bureau of meteorology announced that gusts around 100 km/h have been observed at Coles Point and Woomera with a number of other locations such as Broken Hill reporting severe dust and others reporting gusts near 90 km/h.

Flinders residents stayed indoors watching the eerie orange dust engulf their homes
The State Emergency Service advises that people should:
* Move vehicles under cover or away from trees;
* Secure or put away loose items around your property.
* Stay indoors, away from windows, while conditions are severe.

The Australian: “– the longest dust storm in living memory, red desert sands delivering a stinging slap to the face from dawn until close to midnight as they picked up small pebbles from the opal-mined ground.

It is believed it originally lifted off around Maralinga, site of the British atomic tests in the 1950s and 1960s.

But locals like council worker Duncan McLaren went about their daily business and thought little of it, until a day later when they saw images of the harbour city 2000km away, covered in the same red haze which had engulfed their town……………….”

http://cooberpedyregionaltimes.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/filmmaker-david-bradbury-red-dust-dump-originating-at-woomera-is-grave-concern-for-public-health/

It's back: more dust blankets east coast (Australia )

Posted Sat Sep 26, 2009 5:07am AEST
Updated Sat Sep 26, 2009 12:24pm AEST

The second dust storm in a week has blanketed much of New South Wales and Queensland's south-west.

High winds have blown huge dust clouds from South Australia since yesterday afternoon.

In Cunnumulla, in Queensland's south-west, visibility is down to 500 metres, but the weather bureau says the storm is expected to disperse as it heads east.

Flights are not expected to be affected.

The dust is also sweeping through parts of western and central New South Wales, including Sydney.

But forecasters say the impact on the NSW capital is unlikely to be as bad as the storm on Wednesday, which bathed the city in red, orange and yellow hues.

Visibility has been reduced and is likely to stay that way for a couple of hours, but the area of dust seems much smaller, a Bureau of Meteorology spokesman said.

Health authorities are warning people to exercise caution and monitor weather reports.

They are advising asthmatics to avoid exercising outdoors in the morning.

At Young in New South Wales' south-west, resident BJ Wyse says he can taste the dust in his house.

"Standing outside my place now looking at the clock tower, it's about half a kilometre away. You can just see it, with the thickness of it, you can just see the town lights," he said.

"It's just like a red glow. I just talked to a friend of mine in Cootamundra and it's going through there as well, so yep, it's back again."

On Wednesday, Sydney awoke to an eerie red dawn after strong north-westerly winds dumped thousands of tonnes of dust on the harbour city, the Hunter Valley, Wollongong and the state's west.

Hours later the dust cleared from Sydney and arrived in Brisbane, hampering firefighting efforts in southern Queensland by temporarily grounding water bombing helicopters.

The poor visibility affected transport across the affected regions, slowing traffic and causing long delays at airports.

Emergency services received hundreds of phone calls from people with breathing difficulties.

The New South Wales Health Department is advising residents to check the Environment and Climate Change website for health warnings and to monitor weather reports.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/26/2697261.htm?WT.mc_id=newsmail

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