Talk:West Lake Landfill

Environmental Health Risks
The entirety of the section titled "Environmental Health Risks" is based on one source, "Risks of Leaving Radioactive Waste at West Lake Landfill". Missouri Coalition for the Environment. June 19, 2014. Searching the Internet, I couldn't find any reference to such a document short of this Wikipedia article. Is there a place where this article may be found? And if so, are the claims in the risks section backed up by any further sources, or is the Missouri Coalition for the Environment the canonical source for this entire section? [unsigned content]
 * I have tagged this section, consistent with this earlier comment. Le Prof 73.210.154.39 (talk) 00:46, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Potential Health Risks
The section "Potential Health Risks" is kindof amateurishly done. It lists lots of isotopes, but with no information as to quantities or proportions. It might be written to look scary.

To me, it looks like daughter products of Uranium decay. That is, you take raw Uranium from a mine, 99.3% u238, .7% u235, and .0054% of u234. Then you let it sit for years, as in nature, and each nucleus undergoes about a dozen radioactive decays, becoming those isotopes, one by one, and ending with some stable isotope of lead. So for instance u234 will become Th230, Ra226, Rn222, Po218 then Lead 214, Bi214, Po214, Lead 210, Bi210, Po210, then Lead 206 which is stable and never changes. u238 and u235 each go through a similar list, but there's no overlap between the three. So just knowing there's Uranium, you can write down quite a list of isotopes without even measuring. And yes, they're all dangerous, but some more than others.

The problem is, for instance, there's 150,000x as much Ra226 than there is Rn222, at any given time. Most atoms spend less than a week as Rn222, but spend 1600 years as Ra226. Given that you're only starting with .0054% of the atoms in the first place, the amount of Rn222 is miniscule. The amount of u238, however, is more than 99% of it. It's a little bit deceptive just to list the isotopes as if they all had comparable quantities and dangers.

That was assuming raw Uranium. If you instead start with Reactor-grade uranium, it's 3% u235 instead of .7%. If you start with weapons-grade uranium, it's 90% u235 instead of 3%. The list of isotopes is the same, but the dangers are very different because weapons-grade can be used for nuclear bombs! Thorium is also mined and used for reactors, not sure if the Manhattan project used it, but the list of isotopes would be similar.

So it would be way more useful and correct to just say where it came from and what it started out as back in the early 1940s. [unsigned section]


 * The "potential health risks" section ought to be removed. It is unsourced and contains no information specific to the West Lake Landfill. If there were significant (dangerous) amounts of these substances present at West Lake that would be worth mantioning, but without that it is misleading. One could write the same paragraph about a granite quarry, since granite contains Uranium and its daughter products. Rigor Vitae (talk) 20:39, 21 October 2015 (UTC)


 * I have tagged that section consistent with these comments. Le Prof 73.210.154.39 (talk) 00:46, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Todays edits — addressing previous two Talk sections, and a lot more
This was a bold edit, because, as the preceding two editors began to note, the article was a mess. So… I:

Regarding plagiarism— Regarding existing sources— Regarding sections— Regarding the lede— Regarding the "Risks Associated with Hazardous Waste"— Expanded content—
 * As a start, found the opening and later portions of the "Smoldering fire" section, heretofore unsourced, to be plagiarised (matching near verbatim uncited online content);
 * Located sources for some of the material, from MDNR web pages, adding those sources; and
 * Edited the texts so it accurately reflected these sources;
 * Completed as many references as I could, adding authors, dates, checking URLs, etc.: EPA, EMS, MDNR, Tomich, St Louis Public Radio, Lacapra, etc.;
 * Noted lack of page numbers to locate information used from EPA and EMS sources (sources 100 to > 1000 pages long);
 * Addressed the many redundant-appearing citations so each source now only appears once: EPA, EMS, Tomich, St Louis Public Radio, etc.;
 * Created a tag to get Bull to come by and do his usual wonders for bare URL (or near bare URL sources);
 * Elevated EPA studies to full section.
 * Added a Further reading section.
 * Relabeled some headings, e.g., from "Current situation," to "Situation, 2010-2015"
 * Split Current from (purely speculative) Future management sections, leaving Current near top, moving Future (speculative) to the end;
 * Moved completely unsourced, naive, non-encyclopedic Health Risks section to the penultimate position in the article (see more below);
 * found MANY, MANY sentences of the lead unsourced, and not appearing in the main body of article (re: OU-2, thorium, radiation release into air, 1000 feet away location, "high concentration," "illegally dumped," etc., so tagged inline as, or if discrepant from main body, removed;
 * Noted the volume of material computations are both unsourced in lead and main body, and are original editor calculations (and so OR, see below);
 * Noted precise dates of Superfund proposal and listing are unsourced (year only is in EPA source cited);
 * Shortened this overly long title;
 * Reversed the order of the subsections, based on veracity and importance;
 * Noted the whole of the morass to be unsourced and non-encyclopedic, as noted by two editors earlier on this page.
 * From the same section, I removed an inane comment regarding the use of a radioactive element in political assassination;
 * Left the remainder of the plagiarized radionuclide information in this section, in place, for now.
 * In opening sentence of lead;
 * In the "Situation, 2010-2015" section, based on a newly added EPA source; and
 * In the "Smoldering fire" section, in dealing with that plagiarism.

For the foregoing reasons, I placed a Lead rewrite ARTICLE TAG, saying,"The current lead does not summarize the article; rather, it introduces new information not appearing in the article, information that is unsourced, and it presents calculations also not substantiated in the article that together violate WP:OR and WP:VERIFY."

For the foregoing reasons, I placed a Expert needed ARTICLE TAG for someone from Medicine for the Health Risks section, saying,"The Environmental and Potential Health Risk subsections are entirely unsourced, making their whole section unsourced, and leaving that content un-encyclopedic ("amateurish," in the words of an earlier critical editor), and in need of complete rewriting from an informed health professional."

For the foregoing reasons, I placed a Expert needed ARTICLE TAG for someone from Occupational Safety and Health for the overall article and its structure, saying,"The whole of this article is poorly structured, and poorly sourced from an historical and public policy perspective; secondary sources are completely unused; 22 of 53 citations are to EPA documents of hundreds to over 1000 pages, cited without page numbers, and these primary sources are thus overused raising issue of WP:OR; home webpages are overused as sources; a third of citations are from two local news reporters, and of 23 news reports cited, Rolling Stone is the sole national source [for this article about health and safety, public policy, and the environment]."

All for now. Probably a waste of life this, but what's done is done. Le Prof 73.210.154.39 (talk) 06:47, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Struck references to earlier edits no longer comprehensible because of subsection deletion today. Le Prof 73.210.154.39 (talk) 06:47, 28 October 2015 (UTC)