Beginning in 1960, the Mound released radioactive tritium into the air and contaminated the soil with plutonium-238. Our city water supply was piped up Mound hill; we played at the Adena Indian mound, spent countless hours at the Miamisburg public pool and fished in the pond.
My father worked at Presto Adhesive Paper, below Mound Lab, on Mound Avenue. He died at the age of 53 of a rare cancer called multiple myeloma.
Our mother had already undergone radical mastectomy and radiation for breast cancer prior to age 50; she would later die of mesothelioma.
Our older brother died in his early sixties of bladder cancer, and my daughter had her cancerous left kidney removed while in her mid-thirties.
My family’s experiences are only a small part of our neighborhood cancer history. Beginning with Mound Road, spreading back Marsha Drive and all along Meadowview Drive, one — and in most households, both — parent experienced different types of malignant disease, i.e.: multiple breast and colon cancers, parotid tumor, bladder, prostate, lung, skin, mesothelioma, brain, aplastic anemia and a child with leukemia.
I estimate that cancer occurred in 90% of the households in that neighborhood.
How did city officials allow this to happen? Where were our environmental watchdogs from the 1970s until 1989, when the Mound plant was placed on the EPA priorities list? My family and our neighbors deserve answers to those questions.
Sally Nunery Dunn
West Carrollton