Does Your Hamburger Glow In The Dark?

Does Your Hamburger Glow In The Dark?


The Southwest United States is home to a wide collection of abandoned uranium mines. Radioactive material at a few of these sites has been cleaned up by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Energy (DOE), but many sites are still contaminated with dangerous amounts of radioactive dust. People who visit these sites, many of which are on a Navajo reservation, endanger their health.

Cattle that graze there, according to stories in The New York Times, may be the source of radioactive beef. “Those cattle go to auction in Sun Valley and are sold on the open market,” Ronald Tohannie, a project manager with the Navajo advocacy group Forgotten People, told The Times. “Then people eat the meat.”

The Times also notes that Derrek Wagoner, who owns Valley Livestock Auction in Sun Valley, Ariz., admits that he buys livestock that may graze in the area of uranium mines. He adds that cattle all over the Southwest are grazing near abandoned uranium mines.

However, no one knows much about the radioactivity these cattle are absorbing or how the milk and meat products from these animals are affecting the health of consumers.

“There’s just not a lot of data,” notes Chris Shuey, an environmental health specialist with the Southwest Research and Information Center. “… mining ended 25 years ago, and the studies ended then, too.”

Shuey adds, “Immune function, kidney disease, high blood pressure — all these things contribute to the burden of ill health,” and could be influenced by eating meat from cows exposed to uranium. “But we don’t know for sure.”

While livestock used for burgers and steaks are checked for contamination with chemicals and pathogens, no system is in place to ensure the meat is not radioactive.

“We still can’t answer fundamental questions — are there wide population health effects due to uranium mining?” Shuey warns in The Times report.