Re: [CPEO-MEF] rocket fuel recycling troubles

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Submitted by Larry Ladd <llladd@sprintmail.com:

Hi Lenny --

Recycled perchlorate in explosives has always been part of my concern.
When in 1998 I pointed out the most suspicious maps in the Atlas of
Cancer Mortality to Annie Jarabek at EPA (male connective tissue
cancer/female thyroid cancer, and specifically the conjunction of both
indicators in the same place),

http://www.dceg2.cancer.gov/cgi-bin/atlas/mapview2?direct=conswm70

http://www.dceg2.cancer.gov/cgi-bin/atlas/mapview2?direct=thyswf70

 amongst the strongest signals was the Mesabi Range hard rock iron
mining area in northeast Minnesota, with a lesser signal coming from 
the Upper Peninsula Michigan mining district. The Mesabi Range is
particularly interesting in regards to the merlin tumor
suppressor/mesothelioma question because of the co-exposure to low
levels of asbestos in the iron mines, but as usual there are lots of
other confounding factors at Mesabi to muddy the waters: heavy metals in
general, and mercury in the streams in particular. The Minnesota state
cancer registry was pretty hostile to the Mesabi Range perchlorate idea,
so I never pursued it. In Utah there was some discussion amongst
regulators that the perchlorate found in the groundwater there was just
as likely to have come from the adjacent mine as from the plant
manufacturing the explosives for the mine.

The perchlorate recycling thing was big in the 1960s, pioneered by some
guy in Utah whose name escapes me right now (Ireco is the corporate
name). Perchlorate from Aerojet and United Technologies was recycled at
a Hercules Powder plant* in Lincoln CA (now Alpha Explosives) and used
in dam construction blasting in the Sierra Nevada -- probably including
the Oroville Dam undermountain generators (maybe they worried about
needing a World War III-proof electrical supply?).

http://www.caohwy.com/o/orovidam.htm

http://cee.engr.ucdavis.edu/faculty/lund/dams/Oroville/OrovilleDam.html

http://members.tripod.com/~djkuba/index-5.html

 So they used the industrial waste from Aerojet in the American River
gold mine tailings to build the underground power system for a dam made
of Feather River gold mine tailings. Wouldn't be surprised if some of
the impermeable clay for the Oroville dam core came from the now-flooded
Titan I silos in Lincoln.

Hercules is HQ'ed in Minnesota. Also note EPA boss Lee Thomas's
placement on Hercules's board of directors after the perchlorate coverup
of 1985 (bogus ion-specific electrode detection technology in the
Aerojet consent decree). Hercules was the beneficiary of most of the
early WWII experimentation with perchlorate, which was primarily done at
the Allegany Arsenal (then in Cumberland MD) and the federal mine
explosives lab near Pittsburgh.

LLL 

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org
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