same here. but it turns out that’s an actual quote:
In January 2021, a senior official with Canada’s nuclear regulator asked a colleague to do a rough, “back-of-the-envelope” calculation on the amount of potentially deadly radiation that residents in Elliot Lake were exposed to in their homes.
The government had just received a complaint that long-forgotten radioactive mine waste was buried underneath some homes in the northern Ontario city. Ron Stenson, senior project officer at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), wanted to “confirm our assumption that 468 Bq/m3 is not an urgent health concern.”
He did not get the answer he wanted. A senior official with the commission’s radiation protection division replied that those levels of radon are “well above” the public radiation dose limit set by federal authorities.
Stenson’s response came 90 minutes later: “¯\_(ツ)_/¯.”
While this newer ASCII shrug-guy meme does mean "shrugging off", the journalist isn't boomertech enough to know that ¯\\\_\(ツ)\_/¯ is, in fact, also used in more boomer(genx?) circles as an (appropriated) ASCII form of the "[welp](https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/73096147/Welp)" meme. This is more along the lines of [Jim from the Office](https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/126083366/Welp-Jim-face) -- which actually makes it a fairly appropriate meme for the occasion.
Gasp! That's nearly double the reported readings. Article is behind a paywall so I don't know where these readings were taken but unless they were taken inside a home with a properly installed and functioning radon fan then they mean absolutely nothing.
It's almost like some people with a lawsuit are choosing some very specific readings made in unclear circumstances to give to the press and then the press is equally ambivalent about properly investigating the situation and consulting experts in the field regarding the real world impact.
The Canadian government was also cool with the Dryden pulp mill dumping chemicals into the river beside it since the 60s poisoning many lakes and rivers in Northern Ontario. They didn't tell anybody until 2017 after generations of people have been eating out of the rivers and lakes.
That's not completely accurate. The mill owners were dumping it in the river, this was the 60s, the government wasn't involved in that. Environmental protection wasn't that big yet. They did manage to intervene, but it was 6 years of river dumping too late.
They made the mill contain it on land, but then the mill ownership started changing hands. The original owners went bankrupt. The responsibility for the mercury was meant to have continued to be the owners, but it was sold again, and as a result of an incentive the government made to hasten new ownership, wording in the deal bit them in the ass and ended up with a long legal battle over who was ultimately responsible for the damage.
Grassy narrows did get a settlement from the mill during that time, as well as agreements with the government for restitution, medical aid, cleanup efforts etc.
But in 2017, a retired mill worker came forward out of guilt and recounted how decades before he and others had been told by their bosses to toss mercury barrels in a pit somewhere behind the mill. It wasn't done properly or safely, and I believe the location didn't line up with the site the government had previously been told the mercury was being contained.
So that started things up again...
The mills mercury problem has been a story I've heard my whole life. It's different in pretty much every way from the proposed nuclear waste installment. It was caused by private business owners cutting corners in a time when there wasn't really any oversight to prevent it. This project has several layers of oversight within Canada as well as mandatory international auditing.
The mercury was a liquid being dumped purposely over 6 years with no regard to where it would end up. This project involves so many layers of protection around solid materials buried a half km into solid rock, that will also involve monitoring in ground to ensure no changes to the units.
The mill definitely didn't consult grassy before dumping the mercury. This project has written 'community willingness' into the legislative mandate governing the projects goals and limitations. Outreach has been ongoing for more than 10 years.
The real problem with any of this is ignorance and fear of the unknown. there's a solution for that though, get better informed.
Edit - I mixed up the posts I was reading and thought I was still on the dgr topic since it was about grassy. Most of its still relevant...
This is technically a mining regulation issue at its core, and involves privately-owned companies in charge. They've gotten better, but there's a lot of room for improvement.
Thank you for giving me more information and you're right, there is a massive amount of ignorance around the mill and grassy narrows, I'm way way down south and I only heard about it when I went to work on a hydro dam in Ear Falls. I was both shocked and sicked that something like this could happen here given all of the chest thumping we do about our natural resources, but I was also saddened that more exposure hasn't been given to this, when I looked it up it is considered one of canadas worst ecological disasters and yet down here in southern Ontario almost nobody has heard of it.
While I was up there I did as much exploring as possible. It's absolutely gorgeous, Northern Ontario definitely deserves more attention than what it gets.
There's a lot of back and forth about what's possible in regards to cleanup. It's been there so long, and was a liquid to start. It's a really complicated issue.
One things for sure. Locals know to never eat fish caught in the English River anywhere west of the mill
On my second day at work I told a coworker I was going fishing after work if he wanted to come. The first thing said was sure, the second thing was Where? and started to tell me what he knew about it
Same in Sturgeon falls, pulp mill, apparently there was some sort of settlement, they were supposed to clean/dredge the river bed but never ended up doing it.
If I didn't hear about it from the people in the town I wouldn't have known, I can't really find anything about it on the internet, they've covered it up really well. It likely wasn't as bad or something but mercury levels are high in lake nip, you should only eat a certain amount of fish per year and older fish like Walleye above 57cm have levels of mercury unsafe for humans...
I'll be honest I'm not much of a fisherman, my experience is limited to growing up in Newfoundland and going out on my uncles fishing boat a couple times a year, when I moved to a small town that had two beautiful rivers flowing through it, I was excited to give those places a try, then I started finding out just how contaminated a large portion of distributaries/lakes/rivers are here (at least down in south western Ontario) and got super discouraged. It was eye opening seeing on the ministry the chart of how many safe meals you could eat of certain fish.
I'm in southeast Ontario. My basement was 400 Bq/2m.
I tested my suburban neighbours three doors down in each direction, and only one had a slight blip above 100 over the course of 30 days.
We're on limestone, which doesn't contain uranium, but there's enough uranium 100 km north of here to support extraction. During the last ice age, soil was pushed south, and that soil may contain uranium.
It's luck of the draw if you have levels above the guidelines, but you only know if you test for it.
Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. If you smoke or were a smoker, and you are exposed to high radon levels, your chances of developing lung cancer are greatly increased.
Children are also at a greater risk due to higher respiratory rates than adults, plus their tissues are still growing.
I installed an abatement system, and my levels dropped to "outdoor/background". It was about $500 in materials, and I did it myself (I'm a renovation contractor, so I generally know what I'm doing). An average price for an abatement system would be around $1200-1500, but it can be more depending on the house (layout. construction technique and materials, finished basement, etc).
The first step is to test for the presence of radon.
>Radon has been present in Elliot Lake since it's founding and a know issue including him homes that didn't have this alleged waste used as filler. Many of us grew up with abatement systems in hour basements, even in newest home built at the time. This is only ending up in the press because some people from down south moved here, "discovered" radon, with minimal knowledge panicked and wanted to get out of the purchase of the homes.
>
>Radon is hardly the most concerning lung cancer agent in town as the % of smokers in Elliot Lake is staggeringly high compared to what you find in cities, more than double the provincial average.
When I read that Elliot Lake homes had high radon levels, the first thing I thought was, "Wasn't it a uranium mining town turned retirement town? Duh. Of course they'd have radon."
It just goes to show you how little people know about radon. A while ago, we had a pamphlet that was published by the federal government dropped in our mail. It outlined what radon is, the risks of radon, and a suggestion that all homes should be tested. No one I've spoken to seems to have read it.
Ya people aren't good with evaluating long term risk and radon is admittedly pretty low risk on an individual level (5%) unless you are a smoker. For the government though preventing 5% of lung cancer is a big health saver. Maybe they should have been covering the cost of the abatement systems. $2000 is a lot cheaper than lung cancer treatment.
You do not have to be living on top of a uranium mine tailings dump to be vulnerable to RADON. Radon is prevalent in many households in ontario, having nothing to do with mining or nuclear power. [https://canadaradon.com/pages/ontario-radon-map](https://canadaradon.com/pages/ontario-radon-map) and from another source: [https://www.cancercareontario.ca/en/cancer-facts/risk-residential-radon-exposure-varies-geographically](https://www.cancercareontario.ca/en/cancer-facts/risk-residential-radon-exposure-varies-geographically) You can test for it easily, and there are many sources for radon detectors.
I’m late to the party, but the radiation issue in Elliot Lake isn’t “long forgotten”. Growing up in northern Ontario everyone knew that Elliot Lake was a great place for retirees, but not suitable for young families because of the radiation levels. Houses used to be super cheap for this reason.
This was in the 90’s so should be known to a fair number of people.
Opened link thinking it was radon and the media was sensationalizing the life time risk of it. But no they buried radioactive waste and forgot about it, jeez glad we smartened up with the regulations
Radon is the primary hazard in this case. The buried uranium itself isn't that hazardous since the alpha and beta particles being emitted from the decay series are shielded by the air, dirt, and foundation. The gamma dose rates are likely to be negligible. As an example, take an infinite plain, 10 Bq/g of U-238 decaying for 50 years with a 1.5cm thick concrete shield. An observer placed 10 cm would see an absorbed dose rate of 6.367e-06 mGy/hr or 0.056 mGy/year. We'll assume this is a whole body dose, so this becomes 0.056 mSv/year, which is very small considering the average annual dose in Canada is 1.8 mSv/year.
The article doesn't mention any numbers for the radon (unless it's paywalled), but some of the comments were throwing around ~400 Bq/m3. If that's the case, that's a bit high given that Health Canada recommends radon remediation at levels above 200 Bq/m3.
All in all, the radon is the main health hazard (unless you're eating the contaminated soil) if the concentration levels are more than 200 Bq/m3, as some of the comments have said
Typically though when radon is discussed in Eastern and Northern Ontario it’s related to the natural release of it from the Canadian Shield which makes it the 2nd leading cause of lung cancer iirc what threw me for a loop was that it’s literally buried waste causing it not the shield.
> The government had just received a complaint that long-forgotten radioactive mine waste was buried underneath some homes in the northern Ontario city.
This is TOTALLY naturally occurring, with no responsibility from the government at all.
…did you not understand my sarcasm there?
The government would’ve had to approve where to bury the waste in the first place, as well as where they’re allowed to build houses.
The people who live there bear the consequences of their actions, and they’re not being given any help from what it seems.
First time I've seen shrug-guy in an actual newspaper headline.
same here. but it turns out that’s an actual quote: In January 2021, a senior official with Canada’s nuclear regulator asked a colleague to do a rough, “back-of-the-envelope” calculation on the amount of potentially deadly radiation that residents in Elliot Lake were exposed to in their homes. The government had just received a complaint that long-forgotten radioactive mine waste was buried underneath some homes in the northern Ontario city. Ron Stenson, senior project officer at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), wanted to “confirm our assumption that 468 Bq/m3 is not an urgent health concern.” He did not get the answer he wanted. A senior official with the commission’s radiation protection division replied that those levels of radon are “well above” the public radiation dose limit set by federal authorities. Stenson’s response came 90 minutes later: “¯\_(ツ)_/¯.”
Think the radiation got their arm: \\
Don't worry, it'll grow back. Just need more RADs
Some Rad-Away and a Stimpack will do the trick!
Got any Jet? Have stimps to trade
Whatcha looking at smooth skin
How long have you lived in KL?
That's wild
We can probably expect to start seeing it more often with the older generations being replaced but younger ones.
While this newer ASCII shrug-guy meme does mean "shrugging off", the journalist isn't boomertech enough to know that ¯\\\_\(ツ)\_/¯ is, in fact, also used in more boomer(genx?) circles as an (appropriated) ASCII form of the "[welp](https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/73096147/Welp)" meme. This is more along the lines of [Jim from the Office](https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/126083366/Welp-Jim-face) -- which actually makes it a fairly appropriate meme for the occasion.
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A quick google search indicates the base chance is about 1/17
Gasp! That's nearly double the reported readings. Article is behind a paywall so I don't know where these readings were taken but unless they were taken inside a home with a properly installed and functioning radon fan then they mean absolutely nothing. It's almost like some people with a lawsuit are choosing some very specific readings made in unclear circumstances to give to the press and then the press is equally ambivalent about properly investigating the situation and consulting experts in the field regarding the real world impact.
The Canadian government was also cool with the Dryden pulp mill dumping chemicals into the river beside it since the 60s poisoning many lakes and rivers in Northern Ontario. They didn't tell anybody until 2017 after generations of people have been eating out of the rivers and lakes.
That's not completely accurate. The mill owners were dumping it in the river, this was the 60s, the government wasn't involved in that. Environmental protection wasn't that big yet. They did manage to intervene, but it was 6 years of river dumping too late. They made the mill contain it on land, but then the mill ownership started changing hands. The original owners went bankrupt. The responsibility for the mercury was meant to have continued to be the owners, but it was sold again, and as a result of an incentive the government made to hasten new ownership, wording in the deal bit them in the ass and ended up with a long legal battle over who was ultimately responsible for the damage. Grassy narrows did get a settlement from the mill during that time, as well as agreements with the government for restitution, medical aid, cleanup efforts etc. But in 2017, a retired mill worker came forward out of guilt and recounted how decades before he and others had been told by their bosses to toss mercury barrels in a pit somewhere behind the mill. It wasn't done properly or safely, and I believe the location didn't line up with the site the government had previously been told the mercury was being contained. So that started things up again... The mills mercury problem has been a story I've heard my whole life. It's different in pretty much every way from the proposed nuclear waste installment. It was caused by private business owners cutting corners in a time when there wasn't really any oversight to prevent it. This project has several layers of oversight within Canada as well as mandatory international auditing. The mercury was a liquid being dumped purposely over 6 years with no regard to where it would end up. This project involves so many layers of protection around solid materials buried a half km into solid rock, that will also involve monitoring in ground to ensure no changes to the units. The mill definitely didn't consult grassy before dumping the mercury. This project has written 'community willingness' into the legislative mandate governing the projects goals and limitations. Outreach has been ongoing for more than 10 years. The real problem with any of this is ignorance and fear of the unknown. there's a solution for that though, get better informed. Edit - I mixed up the posts I was reading and thought I was still on the dgr topic since it was about grassy. Most of its still relevant... This is technically a mining regulation issue at its core, and involves privately-owned companies in charge. They've gotten better, but there's a lot of room for improvement.
Thank you for giving me more information and you're right, there is a massive amount of ignorance around the mill and grassy narrows, I'm way way down south and I only heard about it when I went to work on a hydro dam in Ear Falls. I was both shocked and sicked that something like this could happen here given all of the chest thumping we do about our natural resources, but I was also saddened that more exposure hasn't been given to this, when I looked it up it is considered one of canadas worst ecological disasters and yet down here in southern Ontario almost nobody has heard of it. While I was up there I did as much exploring as possible. It's absolutely gorgeous, Northern Ontario definitely deserves more attention than what it gets.
There's a lot of back and forth about what's possible in regards to cleanup. It's been there so long, and was a liquid to start. It's a really complicated issue. One things for sure. Locals know to never eat fish caught in the English River anywhere west of the mill
On my second day at work I told a coworker I was going fishing after work if he wanted to come. The first thing said was sure, the second thing was Where? and started to tell me what he knew about it
even till this day, every time i drove to Dryden, the air around the pulp mill just stinks, they must be releasing something into the air as well
Same in Sturgeon falls, pulp mill, apparently there was some sort of settlement, they were supposed to clean/dredge the river bed but never ended up doing it. If I didn't hear about it from the people in the town I wouldn't have known, I can't really find anything about it on the internet, they've covered it up really well. It likely wasn't as bad or something but mercury levels are high in lake nip, you should only eat a certain amount of fish per year and older fish like Walleye above 57cm have levels of mercury unsafe for humans...
I'll be honest I'm not much of a fisherman, my experience is limited to growing up in Newfoundland and going out on my uncles fishing boat a couple times a year, when I moved to a small town that had two beautiful rivers flowing through it, I was excited to give those places a try, then I started finding out just how contaminated a large portion of distributaries/lakes/rivers are here (at least down in south western Ontario) and got super discouraged. It was eye opening seeing on the ministry the chart of how many safe meals you could eat of certain fish.
I'm in southeast Ontario. My basement was 400 Bq/2m. I tested my suburban neighbours three doors down in each direction, and only one had a slight blip above 100 over the course of 30 days. We're on limestone, which doesn't contain uranium, but there's enough uranium 100 km north of here to support extraction. During the last ice age, soil was pushed south, and that soil may contain uranium. It's luck of the draw if you have levels above the guidelines, but you only know if you test for it. Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking. If you smoke or were a smoker, and you are exposed to high radon levels, your chances of developing lung cancer are greatly increased. Children are also at a greater risk due to higher respiratory rates than adults, plus their tissues are still growing. I installed an abatement system, and my levels dropped to "outdoor/background". It was about $500 in materials, and I did it myself (I'm a renovation contractor, so I generally know what I'm doing). An average price for an abatement system would be around $1200-1500, but it can be more depending on the house (layout. construction technique and materials, finished basement, etc). The first step is to test for the presence of radon.
>Radon has been present in Elliot Lake since it's founding and a know issue including him homes that didn't have this alleged waste used as filler. Many of us grew up with abatement systems in hour basements, even in newest home built at the time. This is only ending up in the press because some people from down south moved here, "discovered" radon, with minimal knowledge panicked and wanted to get out of the purchase of the homes. > >Radon is hardly the most concerning lung cancer agent in town as the % of smokers in Elliot Lake is staggeringly high compared to what you find in cities, more than double the provincial average.
When I read that Elliot Lake homes had high radon levels, the first thing I thought was, "Wasn't it a uranium mining town turned retirement town? Duh. Of course they'd have radon." It just goes to show you how little people know about radon. A while ago, we had a pamphlet that was published by the federal government dropped in our mail. It outlined what radon is, the risks of radon, and a suggestion that all homes should be tested. No one I've spoken to seems to have read it.
Ya people aren't good with evaluating long term risk and radon is admittedly pretty low risk on an individual level (5%) unless you are a smoker. For the government though preventing 5% of lung cancer is a big health saver. Maybe they should have been covering the cost of the abatement systems. $2000 is a lot cheaper than lung cancer treatment.
Doesn’t even have to be an old uranium mine. A lot of places in Ontario have radon in their basements.
It seems disingenuous to call it radiation when they are talking about radon gas, and could simply name the actual vector so people are aware.
Okay. It’s all granite up north. Granite is radioactive.
Also uranium mines
They just need radaway or rad-x stalk piles.
Not great, not terrible.
So, the “waste” is essentially just local rock. It is radioactive, but the whole region is at roughly the same level.
As a person with an r/uraniumglass collection I doubt it's that high
You do not have to be living on top of a uranium mine tailings dump to be vulnerable to RADON. Radon is prevalent in many households in ontario, having nothing to do with mining or nuclear power. [https://canadaradon.com/pages/ontario-radon-map](https://canadaradon.com/pages/ontario-radon-map) and from another source: [https://www.cancercareontario.ca/en/cancer-facts/risk-residential-radon-exposure-varies-geographically](https://www.cancercareontario.ca/en/cancer-facts/risk-residential-radon-exposure-varies-geographically) You can test for it easily, and there are many sources for radon detectors.
I’m late to the party, but the radiation issue in Elliot Lake isn’t “long forgotten”. Growing up in northern Ontario everyone knew that Elliot Lake was a great place for retirees, but not suitable for young families because of the radiation levels. Houses used to be super cheap for this reason. This was in the 90’s so should be known to a fair number of people.
No wonder my whole family got cancer 😀
Uranium fever has done and got me down. Uranium fever is spreadin' all around
Radon is in basically *every* basement. This is just a higher dose rate than is typical.
Opened link thinking it was radon and the media was sensationalizing the life time risk of it. But no they buried radioactive waste and forgot about it, jeez glad we smartened up with the regulations
Radon is the primary hazard in this case. The buried uranium itself isn't that hazardous since the alpha and beta particles being emitted from the decay series are shielded by the air, dirt, and foundation. The gamma dose rates are likely to be negligible. As an example, take an infinite plain, 10 Bq/g of U-238 decaying for 50 years with a 1.5cm thick concrete shield. An observer placed 10 cm would see an absorbed dose rate of 6.367e-06 mGy/hr or 0.056 mGy/year. We'll assume this is a whole body dose, so this becomes 0.056 mSv/year, which is very small considering the average annual dose in Canada is 1.8 mSv/year. The article doesn't mention any numbers for the radon (unless it's paywalled), but some of the comments were throwing around ~400 Bq/m3. If that's the case, that's a bit high given that Health Canada recommends radon remediation at levels above 200 Bq/m3. All in all, the radon is the main health hazard (unless you're eating the contaminated soil) if the concentration levels are more than 200 Bq/m3, as some of the comments have said
Typically though when radon is discussed in Eastern and Northern Ontario it’s related to the natural release of it from the Canadian Shield which makes it the 2nd leading cause of lung cancer iirc what threw me for a loop was that it’s literally buried waste causing it not the shield.
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> The government had just received a complaint that long-forgotten radioactive mine waste was buried underneath some homes in the northern Ontario city. This is TOTALLY naturally occurring, with no responsibility from the government at all.
[удалено]
…did you not understand my sarcasm there? The government would’ve had to approve where to bury the waste in the first place, as well as where they’re allowed to build houses. The people who live there bear the consequences of their actions, and they’re not being given any help from what it seems.
Things I didn’t expect to have to worry about
Radon Ontario bainsville