Study: Uranium traces in National Lead neighbors, workers

By JORDAN CARLEO-EVANGELIST, Staff writer

COLONIE -- Former workers at a defunct Central Avenue munitions plant and residents who lived near it still carry traces of toxic depleted uranium in their bodies, researchers said today.

A team of researchers from the United Kingdom and the University at Albany say they have shown that even a quarter-century after the former National Lead plant was forced to close, the remnants of its radioactive pollution persist in humans.

While the study which focused on about two-dozen former employees and neighbors of the factory does not attempt to link illness to the pollution, researchers say their findings make a compelling case that a detailed health study should be conducted to determine the levels to which people were contaminated.

In related work, researchers also found depleted uranium dust in four homes and businesses surrounding the site, some of which exceeded the federal clean-up standard for soil there.

The plant is now a vacant field at 1130 Central Ave., just west of the Albany city line.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, the plant used depleted uranium to build a number of things, including armor piercing weapons for the military. Depleted uranium is a less radioactive byproduct of enriching uranium to the formed used in nuclear weapons.

In Colonie, the waste depleted uranium chips were burned in a furnace and vented through smokestacks over surrounding neighborhoods. Residents have long blamed the pollution for illnesses.

Several former workers and neighbors joined the research team, led by Randall Parrish of the University of Leicester in Britain, today to call for funding to continue the work.

Parrish has also tested British war veterans who may have been exposed to depleted uranium dust in the 1991 Persian Gulf war and in the war in Iraq.

But he is one of a growing number of people who believe Colonie, where large numbers of people may have been exposed for decades, provides a unique opportunity to study the effects of exposure.

Professors John Arnason and David Carpenter of UAlbany, both of whom have followed issues surrounding the National Lead site, are also listed as authors of a research paper expected to be published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

Just this summer, the Army Corps of Engineers hauled away the last trainload of contaminated soil, effectively completing the two-decade federal clean up of the site that cost about $190 million.

Community Concerned about NL Industries, an activist group that has followed the clean-up, and the scientists will host a public forum on the research tonight at 6:30 p.m. at Sand Creek Middle School.