The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has given preliminary approval for the use of materials containing radioactive radium in a Florida road project called “experimental.”
The EPA announced Wednesday that it will give Mosaic Fertilizer, LLC permission to use a material called phosphogypsum on several sections of roadway on the company's property.
Phosphorgypsum contains radium, which decays to form radon gas. Both are radioactive and can cause cancer. According to the agency.
Phosphorgypsum is a waste product from the fertilizer manufacturing process that is currently being stored in “warehouses” as part of an attempt to limit public exposure.
Mosaic asked the agency to allow the construction of three 200-foot sections of road using a phosphogypsum mixture “to demonstrate the scope of the road construction design.”
In its preliminary approval, the EPA said the potential radiation risk to public health from construction of the small pilot project is no greater than the risk from keeping phosphogypsum in chimneys.
However, authorities have expressed concerns in the past about using the material for road construction.
that said in 1992 It pointed out that the use of phosphogypsum in road construction has always been considered unsafe, posing risks both to construction workers as well as to those who later build homes where phosphogypsum roads once stood.
The agency's latest move has sparked a backlash from those opposed to the use of phosphogypsum in road construction.
“It is shameful that the EPA ignored its own science showing that the use of phosphogypsum in road construction poses an unacceptable risk to human health and the environment,” Ragan Whitlock, a Florida-based attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote in a statement. said in a statement.
This is described as a pilot project, but it is unclear whether it will lead to further road construction using phosphogypsum.
An EPA spokesperson said approval of individual projects “does not imply approval of any other or future requests.”
“EPA's full review process, including a risk assessment, must be followed for each request for other uses of phosphogypsum, and approval is granted on a case-by-case basis,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also said the agency has determined that the use of the proposed material “poses a low radiation risk to workers and the public compared to the risk of stacking phosphogypsum.”
The EPA previously approved the use of phosphogypsum in some road construction in 2020 under the Trump administration. But it later reversed that decision in 2021 under the Biden administration, describing the previously approved proposal as a “broad and general request” to use the substance in road construction.
