Uranium mines: lung disease and mistrust among Native Americans.

For Gilliland and colleagues’ work on uranium mining and lung cancer among Navajo men between 1969 and 1993 see J Occup Environ Med 2000; 42: 278–83 of the dangers. Some took ore and radioactive fossil wood home. Waste ore was used as building material for homes. Early cohorts of miners were “really heavily exposed”, says Jonathan Samet (Keck School of Medicine, Institute of Global Health, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA), a pioneer in the study of uranium miners’ lung cancer risks. “Federal documents from trips to these mines in the early 1950s describe miners whose tongues were covered with green ore dust, and a lack of washroom facilities.” Such conditions were seen at larger corporate mines, he notes—not just small “doghole” operations. “Past episodes of lung cancer in miners were preventable with adequate ventilation in the mines,” says Frank Gilliland (University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA), who investigated Navajo miners’ lung cancers in the 1980s and early 1990s. Uranium miners brought con tamination home on clothing, exposing family members including women and girls doing laundry, notes toxicologist Johnnye Lewis (University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA). “There weren’t showers or protective clothing”, she says. Another major concern was that Native American children grew up in mining camps, Lewis adds. “Children spent critical periods of organ development exposed in the camps and playing on waste piles.” Following Navajo miners’ lawsuits over lung cancer and silicosis, the 1990 US Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was made law, off ering uranium miners with cancer or lung disease, one-time payments of US$100 000. In 2000, the law was amended to include uranium mill workers and ore truck drivers. But miners exposed after 1971 are excluded from RECA payments, notes Manuel Pino (Scottsdale Community College, Scottsdale, AZ, USA). Before the 1970s, the federal government was the sole purchaser of uranium from the region. Eff orts are now underway to update earlier studies, report Samet and New Mexico Cancer Registry Director Charles Wiggins. “We’re presently working on a study that will characterise the contribution of uranium mining to the burden of lung cancer among the Navajo in the decades after the uranium boom” (after the 1980s), Wiggins says. That study will be released later this year. Lung cancer rates “really seem to have been stable over time, but we’ve no tribe-specifi c analyses”, he cautions. A separate update of the Uranium Epidemiology Study of miners is also underway. “This study will represent one of the longest follow-ups of any study of uranium miners, and the results will be of great interest”, Wiggins predicts. The cohort data in clude smoking histories, mine working histories, and respiratory function test results—a “rich data set last updated more than a decade ago,” he says. After the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979, many planned nuclear power plants were cancelled and the uranium mining industry declined, Samet says. Mining companies “just left and let the mines fl ood in the Uranium mines: lung disease and mistrust among Native Americans