Initially, I heard about these toxic sites from an episode on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight. In the episode, Oliver mentions, Coldwater Creek, in nearby in North St. Louis. At first I panicked having just moved to St. Louis. But most Americans live within 50 miles of a site with radioactive waste or other serious pollutants. The problem is we have never found a proper way to transport and store the waste created by nuclear reactors. And that is especially dangerous because radioactive waste like Radium 226 has a half life of 1600 years. Radioactivity only intensifies over thousands of years. Residents living along Coldwater Creek, where Mallinckrodt left barrels of radioactive waste the company produced for the atomic bombs in the 1940s, experienced high rates of rare cancers linked to exposure to radioactivity. The cancers continue to impact citizens.
We went to the headwaters of Coldwater Creek and other sites on the tour. Below are photographs from the day. I encourage those interested in or worried about this to schedule a tour with Allana. I'm also eager to go on the North STL County Nuclear Legacy Bike Tour, a bike path near where radioactive material has been illegally dumped on its way to other dumping locations. But this will do for now.
Who will be held accountable for this? Supposedly Scott Pruitt will have a plan. The EPA has ignored the issue, possible nuclear fallout at West Lake, for decades. Pruitt claims he will have a plan next month.
I retain copyright to all photographs. For request to use or download images, please contact me.
Allana, our tour guide with her tour guide dog.
Dioxin Mound
Coldwater Creek Headwaters
Industrial park near Coldwater Creek
Picnic in what was Carrollton
Carrollton, once a suburb near the airport
Carrollton, once a suburb near the airport
West Lake, the site of the River Front Times article
There's a fire underground that is dangerously close to radioactive waste
Home on a cliff in the distance overlooking West Lake
Dusk on a chilly November day, overlooking the West Lake landfill
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