A creek with atomic waste from WWII is linked to increased cancer risk
by Ronnie Cohen, July 21, 2025
"Children who lived near a St. Louis creek polluted with radioactive atomic bomb waste from the 1940s through the 1960s were more likely to be diagnosed with cancer over their lifetimes than children who lived farther from the waterway, a new study has found.
"The findings, published in JAMA Network Open, corroborate worries that neighbors of Coldwater Creek have long held about the #MissouriRiver tributary where generations of children played.
" 'We actually saw something quite dramatic, not only elevated risk of cancer, but one that increased steadily in a sort of dose-response manner the closer the childhood residents got to Coldwater Creek,' said the study's senior author, Marc Weisskopf, an epidemiology professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
"As part of the #ManhattanProject, #Mallinckrodt Chemical Works processed #uranium in #SaintLouisMO for the development of an #AtomicBomb. By the mid-1940s, according to historians, the company began to haul its #RadioactiveWaste north of the city, leaving it in open steel drums, unattended and exposed to the elements, next to #ColdwaterCreek."
[...]
"Almost one-quarter of the participants [in a study] reported having cancer. Those who lived within one kilometer of the creek as children were 44% more likely to report having cancer than those who lived more than 20 kilometers away. Even more striking, those who lived within one kilometer of the creek were 85% more likely to have radiosensitive cancers, cancers believed to be caused by radiation."
#Downwinders #WaterIsLife #NuclearWasteIsForever #NPRReporting
