Once Upon a Mine: The Legacy of Uranium on the Navajo Nation

A 45 O n a low, windswept rise at the southeastern edge of the Navajo Nation, Jackie Bell-Jefferson prepares to move her family from their home for a temporary stay that could last up to seven years.A mound of uraniumladen waste the size of several football fields, covered with a thin veneer of gravel, dominates the view from her front door.After many years of living next to the contamination and a litany of health problems she believes it caused, Bell-Jefferson and several other local families will have to vacate their homes for a third round of cleanup efforts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).Decades of uranium mining have dotted the landscape across the Navajo Nation with piles of contaminated mine waste.The EPA has mapped 521 abandoned uranium mines on the reservation, ranging from small holes dug by a single prospector into the side of a mesa to large commercial mining operations. 1 The Navajo people did not have a word for "radioactivity" when mining outfits looking for vanadium 2 and uranium 3 began moving onto their land in the 1940s, and they did not understand that radiation could be dangerous.They were not told that the men who worked in the mines were breathing carcinogenic radon gas and showering in radioactive water, nor that the women washing their husbands' work clothes could spread radionuclides to the rest of the family's laundry.