Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q. Would you like to see the Brookhaven National Laboratory shut down?

A. No. They have won six Nobel Prizes, added $51 million to Long Island’s economy in 2006, and contributed to amazing discoveries in addiction and cancer therapies as well as ways to detect nuclear material in the country’s cities. I do, however, feel conflicted about the level of nuclear science that is appropriate for the island—obviously, they were issues of careless neglect with the nuclear reactors, and I feel that it was irresponsible on the lab’s part to keep the reactors open and build new ones after the post-war population boom in the 1950s made it clear that the laboratory was no longer functioning among potato farms and scrubby pines. Long Island is a place with no significant evacuation routes, so even the small amounts of radiation produced by the lab’s accelerators and ion colliders are troublesome in light of their history. 

Q. How could the Brookhaven Lab improve its relationship with Shirley?
A. First, they need to admit that a relationship exists. Second, they need to apologize. I find it incredibly offensive and disrespectful to the surrounding communities that the lab talks only of its clean-up efforts rather than the reason they are being forced to spend millions of dollars on this clean-up (eg. they are the ones that produced the chemical and nuclear waste in the first place). They need to take responsability and admit their failings rather than pretending that this history does not exist. Only then can their successes and achievements, including the environmental ones--of which there are many--be fully celebrated. I also think the the lab has a great opportunity and responsibility to foster scientific study in local youth—a Brookhaven National Laboratory scholarship fund at the William Floyd High School would be a great start.

Q: The book is a combination of memoir and narrative nonfiction. Why did you choose this hybrid rather than moving fully in one direction or the other?

A:  The personal aspect—introducing readers to real people and families whose lives have been changed by the events outlined in the book—was important to me because it seemed the best way to get at the truth. There have been countless studies and reports about the links between the environment and the high rates of cancer on Long Island, and more often than not I found that they contradict one another or simply leave Shirley out. This feeling of not being represented by the official version of history is what prompted me to include the personal side.

Q: I heard there were some studies more than a decade ago that looked at cancer and congenital diseases. What do you think about these studies?

A: I think these studies were promising first steps. But, like the Long Island Breast Cancer Study Project, ultimately they could have gone much deeper and both experienced frustrating complications. I’ve outlined a few of those complications on a separate page: Click here for the long answer.

Q. I’ve heard that the Department of Defense has nothing to do with the lab.

A. The Department of Defense is very active in experiments throughout the national laboratory spectrum. As discussed in the book, the Brookhaven National Laboratory was the first national laboratory to be built for purely peacetime purposes. Over the years, the medical arm of the Department of Defense has grown, and this, combined with classified and other defense-related experiments, makes up a primary portion of funding for the lab after the Department of Energy’s support (for example, in 1996 the lab spent $23 million on defense-related work, or more than 30% of the non-DOE money spent that year).The remaining funding is sourced from federal entities including The Department of Homeland Security and the US Air Force Research Laboratory, as well as universities, utilities, and private entities and corporations (drug and energy companies, for example) that are not required to share or publish their findings. Many important studies conducted on the laboratory’s campus have been funded by the Department of Defense, including experiments and studies involving machines like the National Synchotron Light Source and sections such as the Collider-Accelerator group, the Nonproliferation and Safeguards division, the Physics division, the Environmental Research and Technology Division, the Joint Photon Sciences Institute, and multiple medical technology studies.

Q. In the book, a lab representative asks why you are rehashing this history of pollution when the lab is working so hard to clean it up. Most of the book takes place in the 1980s and 1990s, so why still talk about it?

A. The Department of Energy has estimated that cleaning up radioactive and other contamination at its national laboratories may cost $230 billion and take 75 years. The cleanup at Brookhaven alone is expected to cost more than $460 million and take until 2030. Even then, that does not mean the pollution disappears—it will take 300,000 years before much of this nuclear waste will reach levels safe enough for human interaction. That’s longer than Long Island has even existed.

       I do think the lab should be commended for the strides they’ve made in the Superfund-mandated cleanup. According to the lab’s most recent Site Environmental Report, 5,592 pounds of Volatile Organic Compounds and 11.6 millicuries of radioactive strontium-90 have been removed from the drinking water aquifer to date. And in 2006 alone, as directed by Superfund, 372 pounds of Volatile Organic Compounds and 5.3 millicuries of radioactive strontium-90 were removed from the groundwater, and more than 1.5 billion gallons of treated water were returned to the aquifer. But think about these numbers. While they should be commended for removing these pollutants, we cannot forget that they are the ones who released these contaminants in the first place. There is a reason they have been spending so much time and money working on this gigantic cleanup—they are required by Superfund, as they should be since they are the reason the contaminants are there in the first place.

Q. Nuclear energy is currently being touted as a possible answer to stop global warming. What are your feelings on nuclear reactors for energy?

A. Usually my first question to people who believe this is “the” answer is, “Would you raise your family next to a nuclear reactor?” Aside from the risks associated with accidents and low-level radiation exposure, nuclear power just isn’t green. There are many hypotheticals that make nuclear power look good on paper, but if you dig a bit deeper it becomes clear that nuclear power is not the answer. It is true that when held up against coal-fired power plants, nuclear reactors—when run perfectly—are cleaner and greener, but this is not to say that they are, in and of themselves, clean or green; they still produce greenhouse gases; use a huge amount of water, chemicals and fossil fuels; there is just not enough uranium in the world to sustain long-term nuclear power; and the waste they produce will be with us on this earth for 300,000 years. Until we figure out the safety and waste issues, the nuclear option should be removed from the table. A new nuclear power plant costs $3 billion. Imagine using that money to investigate faster ways to reduce carbon emissions or conserve energy. I believe, as suggested by the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that our money is better spent on a combination of alternative and renewable energies, with a focus on energy conservation in the meantime.

Q. This story reminds me of the movie Erin Brockovich or the book A Civil Action. Is there a lawsuit involved in Shirley? How is Shirley different from these other examples?

A. This story does have echoes of the cases discussed in Erin Brockovich and A Civil Action. The two main differences are: the pollutants involved in these two cases did not include radioactive material, as Shirley’s case does; and the polluters were private companies, not our own government. The similarities abound: there is a class action lawsuit pending, which has been struggling along in the courts for more than 10 years. One of the main lawyers on the case, Richard J. Lippes, fought and won the Love Canal case in the 1970s.  The Love Canal waste site and the Brookhaven National Laboratory share the following carcinogenic chemicals in common: Benzene, Toluene, Chloroform, Trichloroethylene (TCE), Tetrachloroethylene, Xylenes, and PCBs.

        The main contaminant present in Brockovich’s case in Hinkley, California was hexavalent chromium. The case was settled in 1996 for $333 million. Many experts still dispute the connection between the chromium contamination in the groundwater and the myriad cancers.

The book A Civil Action described another class action case in Woburn, Massachusetts that was fought and ultimately won by attorney Jan Schlichtmann, who also supports the Shirley case. The main contaminant present in Woburn was trichloroethylene, or TCE. The carcinogenic qualities of this contaminant is also still hotly debated, and the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy, among others, have fought the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempts to toughen standards for public exposure. The Department of Defense currently has 1,400 military properties that are contaminated with TCE, and the Department of Energy has 23 sites contaminated with TCE. The Brookhaven National Laboratory is one of them.

Here is a list of contaminants found on the BNL site during the Superfund investigation:

Media                                                        Contaminant

Groundwater                                           1,1,1-Trichloroethane
Groundwater                                           1,2-Dichlorobenzene

Groundwater                                           1,2-Dichloroethene

Soil                                                          4,4-DDT

Soil                                                          Acetone

Groundwater, Soil                                   Arsenic

Soil                                                          Barium

Soil                                                          Benzene

Soil                                                          Benzo(B)Fluoranthene

Groundwater, Soil                                   Benzo(A)anthracene

Soil                                                          Benzo(A)pyrene

Soil                                                          Beryllium

Groundwater                                           Bromodichloromenthane

Soil                                                         Cesium

Soil                                                         Chromium

Soil                                                         Chrysene

Groundwater, Soil                                  Ethylbenzene

Soil                                                         Europium 154

Groundwater, Soil                                  Manganese

Soil                                                         Mercury

Soil                                                         Nickel

Soil                                                         Phenol

Soil                                                         Plutonium 239

Soil                                                         Radium 226

Soil                                                         Strontium

Groundwater, Soil                                  Tetrachloroethylene

Soil                                                         Thallium

Groundwater, Soil                                  Toluene

Groundwater                                          Trichloroethylene (TCE)

Soil                                                         Vanadium (fume or dust)

Groundwater, Soil                                  Xylenes

Of these thirty some-odd contaminants, five are radioactive, eleven are Volatile Organic Compounds, four are PAHs. All are carcinogens.