feature

by Nancy Maddox , MPH , writer

The southeast corner of Utah is often referred to as “ canyon country ;” a place where the gods indulged a taste for grandeur . Canyonlands National Park , Hovenweep National Monument and Bears Ears National Monument are all here , among a profusion of protected natural areas and sacred Native American sites .

Also here ? The only active conventional uranium plant in the US — White Mesa Mill , owned by the Canadian company , Energy Fuels .

And just three miles beyond that facility — with a licensed capacity of over eight million pounds of uranium per year — lies the small White Mesa reservation of the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe , which is headquartered in Towaoc , Colorado .

Yolanda Badback has lived on White Mesa all her life , along with her four children , ages 15 to 23 . And for much of her life , she has been concerned about what ’ s coming into the nearby mill — which processes locally-mined uranium , plus toxic debris hauled in from across North America — and what ’ s going out .

Some of Badback ’ s neighbors lack access to transportation , so to reach the nearest off-reservation town of Blanding , they walk along US Route 191 , close to the big rigs carrying radioactive waste to the mill . Badback wonders how much exposure those neighbors suffer . She has other concerns , as well .

“ We ’ re just downstream from the mill ,” she said . “ If there were a leak in the [ tailing ] pond , we don ’ t want it getting into our well water .” She also worries about toxic contamination in the deer that community members hunt and eat to celebrate their culture , in the wildforaged herbs they use to “ heal our body , if we ’ re sick ,” and in the air blown across hundreds of acres of tailing ponds .

Thanks to a partnership between Ute Mountain Ute Tribal authorities and the Utah Department of Health , some tribal members no longer have to guess their exposure to key toxicants . As part of the Four Corners States Biomonitoring Consortium , the Utah Public Health Laboratory has been studying residents ’ exposure to common toxicants for about a decade . Now in its second cycle of funding from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ), the consortium is measuring heavy metals , pesticide chemicals , disinfectant and deodorant byproducts and phthalate metabolites in human specimens from across the region .

Said Laboratory Director Robyn Atkinson- Dunn , PhD , “ We ’ ve been trying to determine where throughout the state we could focus , communities that maybe

6 LAB MATTERS Summer 2018

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