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The Daily Planet received a copy of this letter, reproduced in part, addressed to officials at the California Department of Toxic Substances Control: 

Regarding the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Petition to restart highly radioactive tritiated mixed waste treatments under a treatability study exclusion: 

We are writing this letter as a follow up to Ms. Pamela Sihvola’s phone conversation earlier today. As was indicated, it is our understanding that the LBNL has no stack monitoring devices that would monitor Tritium Labeling Facility stack emissions containing hazardous chemical constituents, including dioxin. According to LBNL’s “Tritiated Mixed Waste Treatability Study Report: 3/15/99” : methylene chloride and chloroform are present in LBNL’s mixed waste, and when oxidized contribute to the formation of dioxins as does the presence of benzene. 

Other chemical compounds mentioned in the LBNL 9/20/01 petition, and used at the NTLF tritiation operations, include pharmaceuticals, pesticides, biological compounds etc. We therefore ask you to request LBNL to provide information pertaining to how the NTLF stack emissions are monitored for the presence of these compounds and other hazardous chemicals and dioxins, and to provide you with such data. We also request that your agency is provided with information and data pertaining to monitoring of the hazardous chemical constituents of the large tritium groundwater plume at LBNL, since it now appears that NTLF stack emissions may contain hazardous chemicals as well.  

Pamela Sihvola and Barbara George,  

Women’s Energy Matters 

Berkeley