Missouri school to close after radioactive waste report

A Missouri school board decided Tuesday to shut down a grade school that sits near a contaminated creek after a study funded by law firms involved in a class-action lawsuit found high levels of radioactive material inside the school.

Contamination was in classrooms, the playground and elsewhere at Jana Elementary School in Florissant, Missouri, according to a report last week by Boston Chemical Data Corp. It follows another study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, made public in the summer, that found contamination stemming from World War II-era nuclear weapons production in a wooded area near Coldwater Creek.

The Hazelwood Board of Education voted in closed session Tuesday to close the school until it can be cleaned up. Virtual learning will start Monday and is planned until the students can be moved to different schools, tentatively scheduled for Nov. 28. It’s unclear when Jana Elementary would reopen.

The school board, in a statement after the closed meeting, said the remediation is necessary but acknowledged “this is causing a disruption to our students’ education and school climate.”

The decision came even as a Corps official raised questions about the Boston Chemical study. Phillip Moser, program manager of the Corps’ Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program in St. Louis, said the agency’s evaluations found no contamination between the wooded site and the school or its playground. He called the Boston Chemical report “incomplete and not consistent with the approved processes required to do an evaluation at one of our sites.”

Still, several politicians urged immediate closure of the school.

The new report worried parents, especially since the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry stated in 2019 that people exposed to Coldwater Creek from the 1960s to the 1990s may have an increased risk of bone cancer, lung cancer and leukemia.

“I do not understand why it’s not closed now,” William Johnson, the father of a current student at the school and three others who went there, told the board.

It wasn’t immediately clear if students will continue at the school through the rest of the week. District spokesperson Jordyn Elston said she didn’t have information on the remainder of the week.

Nuclear waste from World War II weapons production as part of the Manhattan Project contaminated Coldwater Creek. Mallinckrodt Chemical Co. processed uranium ore in St. Louis from 1942 to 1957 and shipped waste to a site near Lambert Airport, where it made its way into the 19-mile-long waterway that flows into the Missouri River.

The Environmental Protection Agency designated the creek as a Superfund site in 1989. Remediation efforts — digging up contaminated dirt and taking it by covered rail car to a waste management facility in Idaho — aren’t expected to be complete until 2038.



A school bus arrives at Jana Elementary School on Monday, Oct. 17, 2022 in Florissant, Mo. Radioactive samples were found at the Hazelwood School District school, according to a recently released report. Nearby Coldwater Creek, which flooded in August, was contaminated by waste from nuclear bombs manufactured during World War II. (Christian Gooden/St. Louis Post-Dispatch via AP)