Radiation Horror in the Phalen Mine
Cape Breton miners exposed to radiation
by Linda Pannozzo
HighGrader Magazine Summer 2000

The tunnels of the Phalen mine slope five kilometres below the Atlantic Ocean. When the coal operation opened up in the 1980s, it was a good news story for the job-starved region of New Waterford, Cape Breton. The soft coal seams promised work for at least 20 to 30 years.
But it didn't work out that way. Last year the mine was closed after just 13 years in operation. Frequent rock bursts made it unsafe and production stoppages, unprofitable.
In the end, the ocean was let in to claim the black sooty tunnels where the men once risked their lives. But for some 50 former miners, this wasn't the end. They have been left wondering if they will join the century old line of more than 300 men who came before them and were lost to the New Waterford pits.
Over a 12 year period, these men were exposed to gamma radiation at the Phalen mine. The company that owned the mine the Cape Breton Development Corporation (Devco) had taken no steps to warn the men of the dangers they faced, even though the risk was entirely avoidable.
Earlier this year, Devco pleaded guilty to seven charges under the Atomic Energy Control Act for failing to ensure proper training for those working with radioactive material.
The judge in the case couldn't believe his ears.
"It boggles the mind," he said as he chastised and fined Devco the maximum fine of $25,000 for knowingly exposing Phalen employees to radiation over a protracted period of time.
Judge David Ryan told the Sydney court that Devco paid more attention to a burned out light bulb, and that "this type of radioactive instrument is not benign but inherently dangerous. If it's not used under the conditions of its license, and there's a considerable number of restrictions, (officials) would revoke the license. But that didn't happen."
And the failure of the mine owners, as well as the Federal regulatory bodies overseeing the situation, has left a number of Phalen miners frightened for the future. So far this negligence is believed to have left one man with bladder cancer, another with a dysfunctional hand and lumps in his throat and many others frightened of what the future might bring.

In l987, the newly opened Phalen mine received a license from what was then called the Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB) (it's since been renamed the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission) to operate two nuclear gauges which were designed to detect coal blockages in the chute.
When a blockage was detected, employees would be responsible to reach in and clear the coal. The gauge itself consisted of a lead box housing a small disc and radioactive isotope (Cesium 137) also referred to as "the source" which produced an invisible beam of radiation.
The men at Phalen were never trained in the use of the radioactive gauges but came in contact with them for years.
They were told they were "as safe as a wrist watch" or "a smoke detector." But only when the disc was housed in it's lead box with the shutter closed. But the men were never told that either.

For 10 years men cleaned out the coal chutes without ever being told the lead shutter had to be shut. All the while they were being exposed to deeply penetrating gamma rays.
Then in December l996, Danny Dean, an underground electrician, was doing a routine cleaning of one of the gauges when he accidentally broke the key off in the gauge's locking mechanism.
"I got the thing out and brought it to the substation," he recounts. The substation also doubled as a lunch room. Off and on for the next four to eight weeks workers took turns trying to pry the key out of the corroded hole with a screwdriver.
According to Hughie MacArthur, the Health and Safety officer for the United Mine Workers District 26, "these guys were getting the full bang - basically carrying around a block of radiation without knowing it."
In July 1997, seven months after the faulty gauge was broken, the mine was inspected by an official of Atomic Energy. He didn't find any problems. "No items in non-compliance," read the inspector's report.
For the two following years, the faulty gauge kept falling out of the lead box because it couldn't be locked in place. The workers often had to resort to picking it up with their bare hands.
In June l999, 38-year old Danny Dean, who'd worked at Phalen since it opened, was diagnosed with bladder cancer. He thought the blood in his urine was from an infection, but antibiotics weren't working. When the bladder cancer was discovered doctors were puzzled. It was extremely rare for a non-smoker Dean's age to get this kind of cancer. He must have been exposed to something. But what?
Three weeks later, the men finally found out what they were dealing with, and the way it all unfolded was something out of a science fiction novel.

Off the Scale
When word came down that Atomic Energy was making another inspection of the operation, the job fell to 45-year-old Forbes Harding and another co-worker to get the underground operation in shape. According to Harding, they were told to put a battery in what looked like an electric multi-use meter, used to measure radiation, and place it somewhere near the chutes (to comply with Atomic Energy Regulations).
On their way, Harding picked up the faulty gauge that had been causing them problems for over two years and carried it in his hand while they made their way to the second gauge. When they turned the meter on the needle went off scale.
"We didn't really know what the meter was reading but we knew it was bad," recounts Harding.
As the men walked around together, puzzled, the meter continued to read off the scale. They wondered if, perhaps, the meter was broken.
At one point Harding put the faulty gauge down while his partner, holding the meter, began to walk away. The further away he got, the lower the readings on the meter. When he turned to walk back towards Harding and the gauge, the meter once again, jumped off scale.
"Jesus Christ, it's coming out of the cylinder," Harding cried out. It then dawned on him that he'd been holding a radioactive isotope in his bare hand for 25 minutes.
They reported the incident to a Devco official, who called Ottawa and the AECB. According to Harding, the Atomic Energy people asked "is the guy who was carrying the thing experiencing any discomfort?" At the time Harding says he could feel a tingle or sting in his hand. He and his partner were rushed to the New Waterford hospital to get blood work done.
"They told me to keep rinsing and washing my hand. I did that for over an hour," says Harding.

Exposure Rates
What is clear from the story so far is that Devco was guilty of not complying with AECB regulations and that men were unneccessarily exposed to radiation. It could even be ventured that Danny Dean's bladder cancer was caused by this exposure.
But what is less clear is just how much exposure the men received and what at point that exposure became harmful.
When it comes to radiation exposure, Canada is legally bound to follow the regulations set by an international body called the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). They set the recommended maximum permissible dose for radiation.
According to Sunni Locatelli, the media contact at the new Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (the old AECB), the maximum dose considered safe from a health perspective for a member of the public has been recently lowered from five milliseiverts/year to one milliseivert/year.
She says these doses are based on the "ALARA" principle - "as low as reasonably achievable."
But some critics say these allowable doses are still too high. Rosalie Bertell is president of the International Institute of Concern for Public Health (IICPH) based in Toronto. She says the international body lowered permissible levels ten years ago, but Canada has only recently complied.
She goes on to say that these acceptable levels are are still "unacceptable." She says they're 50 times higher than is "safe," where "safe is defined to mean it would cause no more than one cancer death per million exposed per year." She goes on to point out that based on her own research, the risk estimates used by the nuclear establishment are also too low, by a factor of four.
In her estimation, the maximum permissible exposure to a million people will not result in one fatality as the standards maintain but will cause 200 fatal cancers.
This exposure "will also cause non-fatal cancers, promote cancers which it did not cause, initiate auto-immune diseases, genetic damage, teratogenic damage, and other various difficulties."

Compensation Battles
It's no wonder the men exposed to radiation at Phalen are frightened. And frustrated.
Coming up with a figure of how much radiation they have been exposed to seems next to impossible. In November l999 George Poirier of Atomic Energy came up with dose levels as did Monserco, a company hired by Devco.
A swat team of investigators interviewed the exposed men, asking them where they stood, for how long, and when? How did they hold the device, for how long and when? Different tasks meant different doses and, since radiation exposure is cumulative, the numbers were added up.
About a month after this initial dose tally was done, the levels were changed. For a few of the men, their estimated exposure was suddenly reduced by 140%.
But Dr. Slavica Vlahovich doesn't believe the dose levels can tell the whole story. Vlahovich is a radiation expert working for Health Canada. She was called in to advise the AECB and provide medical advice and answer any questions the affected men had. Vlahovich says that no matter what the dose, your risk of cancer increases proportionally.
Dean was struggling to get compensation and Vlahovich was asked by the men to write letters on their behalf to the Compensation Board.
Vlahovich wrote a ten page letter, based on the original dose levels supplied by AECB for Danny Dean.
"When you're working in an area where you are exposed to radiation and you develop cancer, it's not a risk anymore. Here you start to look at statistics," says Vlahovich. It becomes a " game of assigning numbers and trying to show a greater than 50 per cent chance the cancer came from the radiation."
Today, Dean is receiving compensation. After two surgeries he's also cancer free, but since bladder cancer is known to recur, he gets scoped every three months to be sure. He credits Vlahovich's letter for helping his case.
"Every time I read it (Vlahovich's letter) I cry - to see what she did for me. It's impossible to ignore radiation as a cause of my cancer," says Dean.

Turned Down
Harding is another story altogether. His voice is raspy from the lumps that have grown on his thyroid and vocal cord. So far they're benign. He's also been diagnosed with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome (RSDS) in his left hand. It started out as a stinging feeling. Now he says the pain in his hand is "unbelievable."
According to the RSD Syndrome Association of America web site, RSD often results from soft tissue injury and the subsequent pain and sensitivity are far out of proportion to the original injury. In some cases, the site states, "it can become a debilitating, chronic, intractable pain nightmare."
The Compensation Board turned down his request for compensation for damage to his hand, on the grounds that there is no scientific or medical evidence to connect RSD to the the exposure of radiation levels.
According to Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick, the chair of the RSD Syndrome Association of America, there is evidence that some patients who undergo radiation treatments for cancer do develop RSD in the neck/head area.
"Clearly you can get it from gamma rays," says Kirkpatrick. He says although he doesn't have any experience of RSD resulting from radiation exposure in an occupational setting, it doesn't mean that it couldn't happen.
Vlahovich concurs, radiation exposure at certain levels can cause symptoms that resemble RSD. The problem is being able to deduce backwards - known amounts of radiation can cause damage to tissue, nerves, blood vessels - this is known as a threshold level. "You can start to detect changes in blood when you're exposed to 500 milliseiverts in a short period of time, like a couple hours."

When the amount of radiation isn't known, it's anyone's guess.
In March of this year the WCB agreed to compensate Harding for stress/anxiety. But to add insult to injury, Devco is appealing. Devco representatives were contacted by the HighGrader for an interview but refused comment on any matter relating to the radiation exposure at the mine or the compensation being sought by the employees. But then, at the last minute they called to have a comment included: "At present a number of employees have notified the corporation that they may also have been exposed. [We] have a process in place to evaluate each claim on an individual basis. As a result we cannot comment any further at this time."
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, that laid the charges against Devco, can't be let totally off the hook either. After all, by their own admission, they are responsible for inspecting licensees to ensure compliance with the regulations here they definitely dropped the ball.
When I asked Tim McLaughlin, the prosecutor in the case who represented the Commission, how we regulate the regulator, he answered "I just don't know."
Political pressure or public outcry may result in an internal review of some sort, but it's clear, in the case of the radiation at Devco, that Devco wasn't alone in neglecting their responsibilities to protect the workers.
On June 1 of this year the old Atomic Energy Control Act of l946 (under which Devco was charged and fined) was replaced by a new law. Under the new law, Devco could have been fined closer to $2.5 million for their failure to train employees.
The Phalen miners are frightened for their future and mistrustful of management and government.
Dean explains, "Both Devco and Atomic Energy are responsible. We just fell through the cracks - we're nobody to them, just a bunch of coal miners. As long as the coal belt was going, that was the important thing."

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