"radioactive contamination of the Gulf of Mexico. "

[donsu]

http://www.counterpunch.com/naumann08112005.html


The Hot Mounds of Samalayuca
Radioactive Border


Lurking in the dunes along the highway just 50 kilometers south of the U.S.-Mexico border city area of El Paso - Ciudad Juárez are heaps of uncontained radioactive waste. The secret in the desert sands recently was revealed by Mexican nuclear physicist Bernardo Salas Mar, a former employee of the federal atomic power plant in Veracruz state who was fired after publicly disclosing its radioactive contamination of the Gulf of Mexico.

Salas, now a professor at the Mexican National Autonomous University (UNAM), investigated the border public health threat in cooperation with the rural residents of the municipality of Samalayuca, adjacent to Ciudad Juárez, in the northern state of Chihuahua. His field research turned up four mounds of metal scraps, each about six cubic meters in size, exposed to wind and water. The radiological inspection determined that the risk of radiation contamination in the human food chain from this abandoned site warranted protective measures.

-snip-

The location is on top of the burial grounds of other waste from what Chihuahua journalist Ignacio Alvarado Álvarez calls the worst nuclear disaster of this hemisphere, "Our Chernobyl." That is the fiasco that began 21 years ago in 1984 when guards at Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratories near Santa Fe, New Mexico, detected a truckload of rebar from Old Mexico contaminated by radioactive Cobalt-60.

-snip-

Meanwhile, the radioactive construction material remains in at least half the states in Mexico. Millions of people are being exposed to the elevated radiation from the rebar in more than 17,000 shopping centers and public buildings, according to conservative estimates. The harm, in terms of cancer and mutations, to this and future generations is incalculable.

-snip-

The least society can do is admit to the mounds at Samalayuca and procure a proper burial at the site.
--------------------------------

so, you eat sea life from the Gulf of Mex.?

wonder how much a Geiger counter costs - I want one, as part of my personal homeland protection

[merh]

1. Not only do I eat seafood

When I was a kid, we went boarding down the sand dues in New Mexico.

I guess my future is "bright" but in a different sort of way. :shrug:

[Oerdin]

2. You know this is in Mexico, right?

I'm just not seeing what the US government could do to stop dumping of hazardous materials in Mexico. Hell, I live in San Diego and the Tijuana river is the most polluted river in North America; we've been trying to get MExico to clean up its act for 40 years but nothing has improved. The city of Tijuana continues to dump tens of millions of gallons of untreated sewage into the Tijuana river which then flows north into the US. The result is ground water contamination and beach closures in the US but short of damming the river and keeping the water in Mexico I don't know what we can do.

[merh]

3. What is under the sands of the dunes at White Sands, New Mexico

I have never really known?

[meg]

4. El Paso is NOT on the Gulf

El Paso is about 700 miles away from Corpus Christi.

Thanks for the info, though. I will pass it along.

[donsu]

5. read the article again - there are two incidents at two different places

nt