Where I stand 1985: Nuke waste poses threat to Nevada

Friday, March 9, 2001 | 9:03 a.m.

Mens sana in corpore sano.

The Latins had a word for it. Literally translated, it means a sound mind in a sound body.

Our university, community college, school district and churches are all in the business of building sound minds in our children. But if the bodies of our precious young people are not sound -- if we permit them to become polluted with poisonous cancer producing elements that will cause them lifelong misery, then the sound mind will be of little worth in their efforts for a better life or any life at all.

An editorial in the Friday edition of the Sun explained what our future portends if the railroad is permitted to bring in untold carloads of radioactive soil that has contaminated New Jersey and which the former Garden State would like to unload on Nevada.

The mind of the average citizen is not able to fully comprehend what this soil contains, so we must turn to the scientific brainpower for enlightenment.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates there will be another 30,000 lung cancer deaths from radon gas trapped inside houses like those in New Jersey.

Radium and its radon gas aren't considered safe by any reasonable scientist.

Dr. John Gofman, the co-discoverer of plutonium -- a radioactive material used in nuclear reactions from bombs to reactors -- estimated that 450,000 new cases of lung cancer each year could be expected from nuclear plant emissions containing radon gas.

There is no way to contain the radon gas that will be shipped in here with each trailer full of contaminated soil from New Jersey. And federal officials even question the safety of the containers that would be used to ship deadly radioactive packages.

Radon gas trapped in a closed space keeps on producing radiation for decades. Radon gas changes into other dangerous particles that definitely create lung cancer.

No matter how they package it, no matter how they camouflage it and no matter how the government agencies and the railroad bamboozle the public, Southern Nevada will become a gigantic hell-hole of poisoned air of death-creating propensity.

This message must be read from every pulpit in every church and temple in Southern Nevada. It must be brought before the students in the schools and it must be yelled from the rooftops if our community is to survive.

The Sun will continue to print the coupon addressed to the County Commission each day.

Centel has decided to forego much compensation by withdrawing its application for a dial-a-porno message. We can reward their consideration for the public's feelings and supplement the telephone company's income by dialing a telegram to the Clark County Commission informing them of our abhorrence at the thought of southern Nevada becoming a dumping ground for New Jersey and the rest of the nation.

Teacher's groups, unions, social clubs and business groups must make their protests known.

Other communities have committed hari-kari, just as New Jersey has by not speaking up when the chemical polluters contaminated its soil and waters. It will now take billions of dollars to undo the harm and it can only come about by dumping the entire load on Southern Nevada.

Is that what our future portends? Is Clark County suicidal or will our citizens react now before the first trainload arrives?

Shout it from the pulpits. Yell it from the campuses. Stop it from the corporate offices. We want our children to have sound minds in sound bodies. We owe it to them.

And Southern Nevada will be the better for it.

Stop the dirty trains.