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Is it ironic?
To The Editor:
The irony of Elmer Grossman's recent letters (“Read the Studies”, July 9 and “Tritium Details”, July 25) assailing the environmental group Committee to Minimize Toxic Waste (CMTW) for its anti-tritium activism, is that Mr. Grossman–a member of the Berkeley Environmental Commission–helped spearhead the effort to ban woodburning fireplaces in all new Berkeley home construction.
At the time, Mr. Grossman advanced the argument that woodburning fires release unhealthy particulate matter and smoke-related toxins into the air. Subsequently, the city prohibited new wood burning fireplaces.
However, when the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) spews radioactive tritium directly into the air and surrounding environment from an outdoor emission stack near densely populated neighborhoods (and 100 meters from the LBNL Hall of Science), Mr. Grossman inexplicably dismisses any potential health concerns.
In his two letters attacking CMTW, Mr. Grossman omits the most damning indictment against LBNL's tritium releases: the Environmental Protection Agency's 1998 decision declaring LBNL's tritium contamination eligible for EPA Superfund radioactive clean-up status.
Although many view so-called “safe” federal radioactive exposure standards with skepticism, between 1998 and 2002, the amount of tritium detected in areas of the LBNL campus exceeded the federal government's own cancer risk screening standards for radiation.
Despite the EPA's recent withdrawal of its LBNL Superfund designation, the fact remains that unsafe tritium contamination levels permeated the LBNL campus for four years, according to the EPA (one can only speculate about the amount of LBNL’s tritium contamination before the EPA was notified and issued its 1998 declaration.)
Mr. Grossman's emotional attacks and claims to the contrary, LBNL's documented unsafe radioactive tritium contamination and cancer risk continue to be a critical health and environmental concern to families in the surrounding community.
Randa Baramki
Berkeley
