Radiation Exposure Environmental Contamination

Our environmental radiation lawyers represent people injured because of exposure to radioactive materials resulting from environmental accidents or illegal dumping. Radioactive (or nuclear) waste is a byproduct from nuclear reactors, fuel processing plants, and institutions such as hospitals and research facilities. It also results from the decommissioning of nuclear reactors and other nuclear facilities that are permanently shut down. If care is not taken in disposal, environmental radiation can pose an enormous public health threat.

Our environmental radiation lawyers are currently offering free legal consultations to any individual sickened as a result of exposure to radioactive materials, as well as their survivors. If you or a loved one sustained a personal injury due to possible exposure to environmental radiation, we urge you to contact us today.

Environmental Contamination From Radioactive Wastes

A number of incidents have occurred when radioactive material was disposed of improperly, shielding during transport was defective, or when it was simply abandoned or even stolen from a waste store. In other cases of radioactive waste accidents, lakes or ponds with radioactive waste accidentally overflowed into rivers during exceptional storms. From 1971 through 1998, in the United States, there have been 401 transportation accidents involving radioactive material. Populations near areas where such incidents have occurred often have higher rates of cancer, birth defects, organ damage and other health problems.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission separates radioactive wastes into two broad classifications: high-level or low-level waste. Low-level waste includes items that have become contaminated with radioactive material or have become radioactive through exposure to neutron radiation. This waste typically consists of contaminated protective shoe covers and clothing, wiping rags, mops, filters, reactor water treatment residues, equipments and tools, luminous dials, medical tubes, swabs, injection needles, syringes, and laboratory animal carcasses and tissues.

This low-level waste may be highly radioactive, but its half-life is relatively short (tens to hundreds of years). Most low-level radioactive wastes are solidified, put into drums, and buried in 20-foot-deep .trenches, which are then backfilled and covered. Three commercial facilities in the United States currently accept low-level radioactive waste: Richland, Washington; Barnwell, South Carolina; and Clive, Utah. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) also operates seven other disposal facilities for low-level radioactive wastes produced by the Department of Defense and its contractors.

High-level radioactive waste is uranium fuel that has been used in a nuclear power reactor and is “spent” or is no longer efficient in generating power to the reactor to produce electricity. Spent fuel is thermally hot as well as being highly radioactive, requiring remote handling and shielding.

High-level wastes are hazardous to humans and other life forms because of their high radiation levels that are capable of producing fatal doses during short periods of direct exposure. Furthermore, if constituents of these high-level wastes were to get into ground water or rivers, they could enter into food chains. Although the dose produced through this indirect exposure is much smaller than a direct exposure dose, there is a greater potential for a larger population to be exposed.

At this time there are no facilities for permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste. Since the only way radioactive wastes finally become harmless is through decay, which for some isotopes contained in high-level wastes can take hundreds of thousands of years, the wastes must be stored in a way that provides adequate protection for very long times.

Legal Help for Victims of Environmental Radiation

Parker Waichman LLP is one of the preeminent personal injury law firms in the U.S. Parker Waichman LLP is listed in Best Lawyers, the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession. The attorneys of Parker Waichman LLP are also the authors of “Personal Injury Law for Dummies,” an easy-to-understand guide to all aspects of personal injury law.

If you or a loved one were exposed to environmental radiation and sustained a radiation-related illness, you may have valuable legal rights. To find out how our environmental radiation lawyers can help you, please fill out our online form, or call 1 800 LAW INFO (1-800-529-4636).