The following radioactive materials were released into the air by the Hanford facility between 1944 and 1972.
|
Material: |
Half-Life: |
|
Iodine-131 |
8 days |
|
Iodine-129 |
16 million years |
|
Tritium (H-3) |
12 years |
|
Krypton-85 |
11 years |
|
Strontium-89 |
50 days |
|
Strontium-90 |
29 years |
|
Ruthenium-103 |
39 days |
|
Ruthenium-106 |
370 days |
|
Tellurium-132 |
78 hours |
|
Xenon-133 |
5 days |
|
Cesium-137 |
30 years |
|
Cerium-144 |
284 days |
|
Plutonium-239 |
24,000 years |
The following radioactive materials were released into the Columbia River by the Hanford facility between 1944 and 1971.
|
Material: |
Half-Life: |
|
Iodine-131 |
8 days |
|
Sodium-24 |
15 hours |
|
Phosphorous-32 |
14 days |
|
Chromium-51 |
28 days |
|
Manganese-56 |
2.5 hours |
|
Zinc-65 |
245 days |
|
Gallium-72 |
14 hours |
|
Arsenic-76 |
26 hours |
|
Yttrium-90 |
64 hours |
|
Neptunium-239 |
2.4 days |
The following hazardous but non radioactive materials were discharged into the Columbia River.
|
sodium dichromate |
sodium hydroxide |
|
aluminum sulfate |
sodium silicate |
|
bauxite |
ferric acid |
|
sulfuric acid |
hydrazine |
|
chlorine |
morpholine |
|
polyacrylamide |
ammonium hydroxide |
Since 1986 the government has releases millions of pages of information about the operation of the Hanford facility but there are billions of pages of information about nuclear weapons production that have not been released.
Source: www.downwinders.com
In 1990, thousands of people who were exposed to radioactive materials as a result of Hanford operations filed suit against former contractors who operated the Hanford site for the United States government including DuPont and General Electric.
All the Hanford Downwinder lawsuits were been consolidated into a single class action lawsuit called the In re Hanford Nuclear Reservation Litigation. The trial began in March of 2005. Thirty people were selected to act as “bellweather” plaintiffs for the trial, fifteen by the prosecution and fifteen by the defendants. Their medical histories were examined in detail and out of this pool of thirty, twelve were selected. These people acted as representatives for the three thousand plaintiffs in order to simplify the proceedings.
The jury found sufficient evidence for awards to three of the plaintiffs, another three cases were dismissed prior to the trial. The outcome of the trial was appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court.
In 2007the Ninth Circuit Court upheld the awards to two of the plaintiffs. The Ninth Circuit Court generally upheld the actions of the lower court but did set a higher standard for deciding in favor of the plaintiffs which may limit the number of plaintiffs that will ultimately receive awards.
In January 2010 the Court created a trial track to test the radiation models being used by the plaintiffs to help achieve agreement between the defendants and plaintiff. The Court also created a mediation track to worked on settle a group of claims. The mediation track was split into two tracks. One track was focused on thirty two thyroid cancer claims file by one set of law firms. The other track was set up to work on another fourty claims randomly selected from suits filed by other law firms.
In 2011, the mediation tracks were declared a failure and the cases being mediated were set to proceed to trial although some of the cases were resolved by mediation.
In January of 2012, two trial tracks were established to adjudicate thyroid cancer and thyroid nodule claims. The original thyroid cancer trial track has been cancelled.
The www.downwinders.com website has been established as a resource for Hanford Downwinders Litigation Information. Further information on the Hanford Downwinder lawsuits can be found on this site.
