Cancer-mill study delayed

Monticello will have to wait till spring for results

By Elaine Jarvik
Deseret Morning News
Published: Sunday, Dec. 31, 2006 1:24 p.m. MST
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The town of Monticello will have to wait until spring to find out whether the state health department agrees that there's a link between cancer cases and the town's former uranium-processing mill.

Originally scheduled for completion in December, the Utah Department of Health's study was delayed while it worked out a contract with the Utah Cancer Registry, which will be conducting part of the research, according to DOH spokesperson Cody Craynor.

"We're trying really, really hard to be patient," said Barbara Pipkin, a member of the town's Victims of Mill Tailings Exposure committee. "I really think they're trying in every way humanly possible" to finish the study, she said, "but we're frustrated."

Following public meetings with Monticello residents last May, health officials agreed to expand their original study, looking at additional cancer cases not already listed in the Utah Cancer Registry. Those new names include former town residents who moved out of state or were treated out of state, or whose names were inadvertently excluded from the registry.

The health department is also looking at ways it can include names of people who were diagnosed prior to 1973, the year the Utah Cancer Registry was established, according to health-department epidemiologist Dr. Juliana Grant.

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Last summer, the Victims of Mill Tailings Exposure committee provided the health department with 440 new cancer cases (on top of the 141 cases that were part of the original DOH study). Those 440 people now must complete an expanded survey, and that information must be verified. Then health department epidemiologists will repeat their investigation to determine whether there were indeed elevated rates of cancer in Monticello compared to the state as a whole.

The department is also hoping to find another small town, perhaps in a nearby state, that could be used as a comparison. "In an ideal world, what we would want is a town exactly like Monticello in every way, even clones of the same people, except with no uranium mill," Grant said. In lieu of that, epidemiologists are hoping to find a town with similar demographics, including similar rates of cigarette smoking.

The uranium mill operated on the south side of Monticello from 1941 to the beginning of 1960, processing both uranium and vanadium. For years, toxic dust blew across the southeastern Utah town. After the mill was closed, uranium tailings were used by residents in the mortar and foundations of their homes.

Monticello residents would like monetary compensation for all victims, not just the miners and mill workers but the children who played in the leftover tailings piles and the wives who washed the laundry of the men who came home covered with uranium dust.

The town was declared a U.S. Department of Energy Superfund Site and was eventually given a clean bill of health in 2000.

E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com

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A photo of Monticello from 1942 shows mill housing in the foreground and the uranium mill in the background. It operated from 1941 to the beginning of 1960, processing both uranium and vanadium. For years, toxic dust blew across the southeastern Utah town. (Deseret Morning News archives)
Deseret Morning News archives
A photo of Monticello from 1942 shows mill housing in the foreground and the uranium mill in the background. It operated from 1941 to the beginning of 1960, processing both uranium and vanadium. For years, toxic dust blew across the southeastern Utah town.
Gallery (2 photos)