to handle the toxic contamination in Colorado.
Let’s find more
responsible ways
Nuclear weapons haven't been produced at the site south of Boulder since 1989,
but toxic residues remain. Plutonium was left in soil on and off the Rocky Flats site.
Now, developers want to build a toll road through the most contaminated area, kicking up carcinogenic dust just 16 miles upwind of Denver.
Other plans call for public recreation on the site. But the plutonium will be dangerously radioactive for a quarter-of-a-million years, outlasting many lifetimes, including our children's children's children's.
All people — here today and still unborn — should be protected from the radioactive threat quietly left behind at Rocky Flats.
Who are the most vulnerable of all when exposed to alpha emitters like plutonium and americium?
On the Vulnerability of Children
The human child is undoubtedly the most vulnerable of all creatures when exposed to alpha emitters like plutonium or americium, for the following reasons:
A human child is more likely than an adult to stir up dust, to eat dirt, to breathe in gasps, or to scrape a knee or an elbow, all ways of taking tiny particles of plutonium or americium into the body. Since a child’s body is smaller than an adult’s, internalized plutonium or americium have much less mass in which to be distributed or to concentrate. Plutonium or americium within a child’s body integrates with that child’s growth and tissue development. By contrast to either adult humans or other beings, a child’s normal life span provides far more time for internalized alpha emitters to harm his or her health.