June 25, 2019
Broomfield City Council
City and County of Broomfield
One DesCombes Drive
Broomfield, CO 80020
Mr. Mayor and Members of the Council:
Thank you for arranging the “Discussion Regarding Rocky Flats in Regards to the
Jefferson Parkway” at your June 18th study session (whose video is at
http://broomfield.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=6&clip_id=1508). I
certainly appreciated you creating the opportunity for citizen groups to present
their views on this very important issue. I am writing now to respond to statements
made, positions revealed, and events that transpired in that discussion.
Let me begin with the observation that neither Ms. Opila nor Dr. Urbina addressed
the most important point of all: the alarming recent disease incidence in new
neighborhoods across Indiana Street from Rocky Flats. In Five Parks, the death of
Brian McNeely, and the sickness of Nathan Panzer, from the extremely rare heart
cancer cardiac angiosarcoma (plus other cancers and neurological diseases reported
by Elaine McNeely at 59:10 of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XTtu2DRb3k).
In Whisper Creek, the death of two men under age 40 from stomach cancer, and the
sickness of another man with appendix and bladder cancer, reported to Tiffany
Hanson in April. The compilation by young breast cancer victim Brittany Kelley,
who attended the study session, of now 17 young women from the area afflicted
with breast cancer at a young age. The testimony by Leslie Moritz at Council’s April
23rd meeting on her Pomona High School classmates, three of them, who developed
cancer before their five-year reunion. Perhaps CDPHE doesn’t address this point
because it is unaware. It has never conducted a health monitoring program on the
population near Rocky Flats, as urged by Drs. Carl Johnson and Richard Clapp.
Ms. Opila stated at 2:48:52 in the study session video that the estimated lifetime
cancer risk for a person living on Refuge land, if that were to be allowed, would be
30.001% - one excess cancer in ten thousand people more than the risk for any
Coloradoan. But the disease incidence in Five Parks alone demonstrates the
inaccuracy of that estimate. The population in Five Parks is only 1,662 people (per
https://statisticalatlas.com/neighborhood/Colorado/Arvada/Five-
Parks/Population), yet it had two cases of an extremely rare heart cancer. In
responding to the 19 questions Council Member Castriotta sent CDPHE, Ms. Opila
glibly dismissed this fact with the statement (at 3:22:25 in the video) that “a number
of your concerns were with cancer clusters ... our cancer studies have shown that
there was not an increased cancer risk.”
2
CDPHE’s cancer studies are sufficiently flawed as to be meaningless (more on that in
Attachment E pp.8-10 of the Jefferson Parkway Advisory Committee’s Final Report,
linked from https://www.jppha.org/citizen-engagement). In asserting that “the
remaining contamination poses a low risk to human health,” as Ms. Opila did at
2:48:00 and 2:53:15 in the video, CDPHE relies on two would-be substantiations.
One is its seriously flawed cancer studies. The other is the 50 pCi/g CERLCA soil
action level reverse-engineered from the Congressionally-capped budget for the
Rocky Flats cleanup project, as documented by Dr. LeRoy Moore in his recent book
Plutonium and People Don’t Mix
(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0578488590/). Neither argument is based
on accurate measurement and root cause analysis of disease incidence in the
population downwind of Rocky Flats. In short, the available information - including
three other eminently credible epidemiological studies - does not support CDPHE’s
contention that the remaining contamination poses a low risk to human health.
Another interesting observation was the inconsistency between Ms. Opila’s and Dr.
Urbina’s statements on the question of whether a single alpha radiation particle can
cause cancer. Dr. Urbina flatly stated at 3:12:38 in the video “so, the one particle
causing cancer is just simply not true,” referencing one study by a longtime DOE
contractor. But at 3:28:00, in response to Council Member Shelton’s statement that
“there have been people that have said that just one particle can be ingested, and it
can radiate emissions forever, and almost guarantee some kind of cancer,” Ms. Opila
stated “we are not disputing that.” She further states at 4:56:05, in response to a
statement from Council Member Groom, “it [one particle] could create cancer.” One
would think that Ms. Opila and Dr. Urbina would have made consistent statements
on that question, given their associations with CDPHE (Dr. Urbina was CDPHE
Executive Director until resigning amidst controversy in 2013). Meanwhile, in an
independent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences of the United States of America, Dr. Tom Hei of Columbia University and
colleagues concluded “[t]hese data provide direct evidence that a single alpha
particle traversing a nucleus will have a high probability of resulting in a mutation
and highlight the need for radiation protection at low doses”
(https://www.pnas.org/content/94/8/3765).
Dr. Urbina opened his presentation by saying “what I’d like to do is put this [health
risks at Rocky Flats] in perspective”, and describing himself as a longtime public
health advocate (2:54:56 in the video). He then listed examples of other risks: air
pollution, tainted food, lightning, motor vehicle deaths, suicide, and summarized “So
I just wanted to put this in perspective to know that there are risks associated
outside of this environment [Rocky Flats]” (2:56:53 in the video). This minimization
of Rocky Flats risk is typical of CDPHE orthodoxy, and raises a very important moral
question: does the existence of other risks absolve government of protecting
citizens from Rocky Flats risks? You might die in a car accident anyway, so what’s a
little plutonium? That reasoning is irresponsible, especially from a county medical
officer who describes himself as a longtime public health advocate.
3
Also typical of CDPHE orthodoxy is equating different types of radiation and doses
received from them. Dr. Urbina stated (at 3:04:00) that a chest x-ray exposes a
person to 10 millirems, and a body CT scan exposes a person to 1,000 millirems.
But a chest x-ray is qualitatively different than an inhaled plutonium particle. The
latter intensely irradiates immediately surrounding cells wherever in the body it
settles. Whereas an x-ray is a different type of radiation absorbed by the entire
body or portion thereof. These different types of radiation are not directly
comparable on the localization or quantity of dose they entail, though Dr. Urbina
makes such a comparison at 3:07:38, in the vein of minimizing estimated dose
received from exposure at Rocky Flats to Refuge workers and visitors.
It’s appalling that CDPHE, whose stated mission is “to protect the health of
Colorado’s people,” continues such a denialist position on the public health risk of
remaining Rocky Flats contamination, when the available evidence – the sick and
deceased residents in new neighborhoods downwind, and three credible
independent epidemiological studies covering 23 years of cancer registry data – all
strongly suggest such a risk exists. And it’s particularly galling that Dr. Urbina at
3:14:47 patronizingly thanked Dr. Carl Johnson – a TRUE longtime public health
advocate, who was ousted from office by business interests around Rocky Flats – for
“calling the question” of public health risk nearby. The question is obviously still
highly relevant, and in need of truly responsible government agencies and
leadership (like Dr. Carl Johnson) to investigate it ethically and thoroughly.
Toward the end of the study session, I was quite surprised that Mayor Ahrens
allowed David Wood to interject himself into the discussion from his seat in the
audience. I’ve seen Mayor Ahrens forcefully shut down such violations of protocol
at other Council meetings. Why should David Wood be exempt? David Wood’s
academic specialization was in semiconductors
(https://physics.mines.edu/project/wood-david/) – not in radiochemistry like Dr.
Edward Martell’s, not in medicine or public health like Dr. Carl Johnson’s, not in
epidemiology like Dr. Richard Clapp’s, not in health physics like Dr. Karl Morgan’s,
not in molecular biology like Dr. John Gofman’s, not in radionuclide chemistry like
Dr. Michael Ketterer’s. In other words David Wood is not a subject matter expert on
these Rocky Flats –related topics, like those other scientists I cite are.
David Wood has a vested interest in attempting to “prove” that the site is “safe,”
because he lives in Candelas. He admits in his own works that his Geiger counter is
unable to detect alpha radiation from plutonium at the site. He has no alternative
explanation or refutation of all the studies I reviewed finding hundreds of times
plutonium background radiation at the site, and elevated cancer incidence in nearby
areas. The information he presents confounds the issue and is irrelevant to the
question. The well-established facts are that: 1) the unremediated east side of the
Refuge, including the Parkway right-of-way, is contaminated with Rocky Flats –
specific plutonium to levels representing hundreds of times man-made background
plutonium concentration from fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons
4
detonations; and 2) plutonium is one of the most carcinogenic substances known to
man. Someday soon, when primary tumor tissue excised from Rocky Flats
downwinders is shown to contain Rocky Flats –specific plutonium by isotope ratio,
all those other confounding arguments will be exposed as the distractions they are,
in the face of smoking-gun evidence of causality.
I will close by responding to some of Mayor Ahrens’ comments made at the
conclusion of the meeting. I agree with Ms. Opila that we can’t change history.
However government has a responsibility to not exacerbate the problem that
already exists – to not raise radioactive dust into the wind.
Mayor Ahrens referred to Broomfield as “the last hurdle” in the Jefferson Parkway
project (at 5:21:48 in the video). I would rather refer to the Broomfield City Council
as the last line of defense, for citizens in the Broomfield neighborhood of Skyestone
and in other neighborhoods, from getting resuspended plutonium oxide dust from
Parkway construction settling on their properties and posing a cancer risk to them.
Mayor Ahrens stated at 5:21:27 “I sit on the Parkway board, and if we thought that
people could get seriously sick because of not mediating, and taking care and
building that road properly, I don't think anybody on our board would do it.” But
the way I personally became involved in this whole issue was by attending a JPPHA
Public Forum on September 27, 2017 and asking Bill Ray, Don Rosier, Marc
Williams, and Greg Stokes whether they were even aware of the studies showing
plutonium concentration in the Indiana Street corridor at hundreds of times
background. They weren’t (see the last question, on p.12, under heading “Questions
about Rocky Flats” in “Public Open House Q&A: September 27, 2017” linked from
https://www.jppha.org/citizen-engagement). Fast-forward almost two years, and
I’ve raised awareness through serving on the Jefferson Parkway Advisory
Committee, culminating in this letter, really.
Finally Mayor Ahrens warns at 5:22:40 that “it's kind of a difficult situation that
we're putting our citizens in and Broomfield if we decide not to move forward.” But
you would be putting your citizens and Broomfield in a more difficult situation if
you do move forward with the current Parkway plans – a situation of being exposed
to airborne plutonium oxide dust.
Thank you again for opportunity to present. I do hope that the Broomfield City
Council will take these grave matters most seriously, as public health is hanging in
the balance.
Sincerely,
Randy Stafford
Member, Jefferson Parkway Advisory Committee