Low-Level Radiation Exposure and Elevated Infant Mortality

The Alliance For A Clean Environment

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Low-Level Radiation Exposure and Elevated Infant Mortality
Is There A Link In Pottstown?

Hiroshima and Nagasaki data show children and infants are more sensitive to the effects of low levels of ionizing radiation.

Data collected from Chernobyl show from monitoring stations as far as 9,000 miles away that infant mortality rates rose after the accident. Researchers suggest that EPA limits on exposures to low level radiation may need to be tightened by as much as a factor of 1000.

Infant mortality rates rose after the rod meltdown in Savannah River, Georgia.

Infant mortality rates also rose after the Three Mile Island accident where people received only low doses of radiation.

The cumulative weight of this data collected on affected populations is persuasive enough to call for PRECAUTION!

We must keep unnecessary radioactive wastes out of our community and out of the Pottstown Landfill.

Pregnant mothers and infants around the Pottstown Landfill already face overexposure to radiation.

Our community already faces elevated infant mortality.

Pottstown Landfill currently emits unknown amounts of radiation into our air continuously.

Limerick’s Nuclear Power Plant also emits radiation just 5 miles from Pottstown Landfill.

Is radiation already emitted into the air in Pottstown a major factor for elevated infant mortality in Pottstown?

Leukemia almost Double the State
Montgomery County Health Department Report January, 1998
PA Cancer Registry Data

Area Around the Pottstown Landfill
West, Upper, Lower Pottsgroves, Pottstown, North Coventry, Douglass Berks Township

Low-Level Radiation Exposure
Is Linked With Leukemia

Radioactive Waste (low level ionizing radiation, the kind linked with leukemia) is transported into the Greater Pottstown Area Every Day, in unknown amounts among about 8,000,000 pounds of garbage in about 300 garbage trucks, to be dumped in the Pottstown Landfill.

The Pottstown Landfill has applied for a permit to legally accept massive and unknown amounts of this radioactive waste, under DEP’s “UNprotective” monitoring plan. This plan won’t keep radioactive wastes from coming here, nor from being dumped in the Pottstown Landfill.

Our leukemia rate around the Pottstown Landfill demands the Precautionary Principle. We can’t afford to be exposed to a continuous and concentrated stream of low level ionizing radiation.

DEP needs to require UP FRONT monitoring on the garbage trucks to avoid bringing this waste into our community. If DEP won’t do this, the Pottstown Landfill needs to be closed.

Children around the Pottstown Landfill are overexposed to massive cancer causing chemicals emitted into the air they breathe 24 hours a day, every day, close to their homes, schools, athletic fields, and parks.

Thousands of children attend 29 schools and day-cares in less than 3 miles of the Pottstown Landfill. Pottstown Landfill’s extremely carcinogenic Pottstown Landfill gas exposes children, indoors as well as outdoors, where they live as well as where they attend school. For 24 hours a day, every day, pregnant mothers in the Greater Pottstown Area, and then their newborn babies, are forced to breathe air filled with the most potent carcinogens (radiation, dioxin, vinyl chloride, benzene and many more). Babies are born with these chemicals in their bodies. Then they are exposed daily through their lungs, skin, and eyes.

Pottstown Landfill’s cancer causing emissions.
While accurate data about the kinds and amounts of carcinogens as well as their additive, cumulative, and synergistic health effects on our children are unavailable, we do know that Pottstown Landfill gas contains extremely potent carcinogens such as radiation, dioxin, benzene, vinyl chloride, methylene chloride, and many others. The true health threat to our children from Pottstown Landfill gas can not be accurately determined at this time, but common sense tells us we can not have it get worse.

Shocking Childhood Cancers Statistics Around the Pottstown Landfill Demonstrate the Need for Immediate Action to Reduce and/or Eliminate Cancer Risks for These Children.

Despite these alarming facts, PA DEP has decided to legalize radioactive waste dumping at the Pottstown Landfill and further jeopardize our children’s future.

Our children’s cancer rates skyrocket above the national, state, and surrounding county averages!

Our Children Need Us To Speak Up NOW!

Help stop radioactive wastes from being transported into our community and dumped at the Pottstown Landfill where it gets into Pottstown Landfill gas and leachate, then into our children’s air and water.

Every business day, about 300 garbage trucks haul about 8,000,000 pounds of wastes into our community, including radioactive wastes, to be dumped at the Pottstown Landfill. Tell PA DEP to stop radioactive wastes from being transported and dumped in our community. Tell DEP you say NO to Pottstown Landfill legally disposing of undetermined amounts and kinds of radioactive wastes. Tell DEP to require monitoring BEFORE radioactive wastes are transported into our community!

For More Information:

landfill radiation