Radioactive waste found inside elementary school, on playground, Missouri report says

High levels of radioactive waste were found throughout a Missouri elementary school, including on a playground for kindergarten children, according to an independent study.

The findings were announced after Boston Chemical Data Corp. performed testing at Jana Elementary School in Florissant. The St. Louis-area school is reportedly near a site where bombs were made during World War II.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers tested near the school in 2018, but the recent report calls its testing “incomplete and inadequate” because it did not collect samples from inside the school or surface soils surrounding the school.

The radioactive wastes found in the new testing at the school are rich in “a radioactive isotope that emits highly damaging alpha radiation,” the report states.

Contamination was discovered in samples from the school’s kitchen, library, classrooms and ventilation systems, according to the report.

But the most worrisome findings were on the kindergarten play area, where the radioactive isotope lead-210 was found more than 22 times what was expected, investigators said. Radium was also found on the playground.

“The presence of lead-210 in soils and dusts at the Jana School is important beyond the excess radioactivity detected,” according to the investigators. “Alpha radiation is especially biologically damaging compared to other forms of radiation such as beta and gamma radiation.”

It’s believed the waste has been in the area since the 1940s, when radioactive material from the bombs contaminated Coldwater Creek, according to KSDK. The creek runs along Jana Elementary School.

The Hazelwood School District said in a statement it is “actively discussing the implications of the findings.”

Ashley Bernaugh, the PTA president at the school, told KSDK the waste needs to be “cleaned up immediately.”

“We should be thinking about fundraisers and bake sales, but instead, we’re worrying about bomb waste,” she said.

Investigators said the contamination, which has spread to nearby properties, requires a “significant remedial program.” That is made complicated, however, by the Coldwater Creek, as future flooding could contaminate the school further.

The findings will be discussed during the Hazelwood School Board meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 18, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

“I wouldn’t want my child in this school,” Christen Commuso of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment told the Post-Dispatch. “The effect of these toxins is cumulative.”

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