Officials at Whiteman Air Force Base say that the chance of getting cancer from being there is less than 1%.
A Missouri Air Force base is getting a lot of attention because it didn’t do anything about tests that showed high amounts of radon in two rooms at the base day care center.
A memo from the leaders of the 509th Bomb Wing to everyone at Whiteman Air Force Base says that high levels of the toxic gas radon were found in the baby and toddler rooms at the base’s child development center in 2022, but nothing was done about it until a September 2023 audit of radon sampling at the base.
The memo was first shared on the popular “Air Force amn/nco/snco” Facebook group. The Air Force told Fox News Digital that it was real. Samples of radon found to be above the “accepted federal level” in June 2022, according to the document. Other rooms in the building tested below “acceptable levels.” “But were not acted upon,” the letter says of the results that were written down and sent to the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine (USAFSAM).
“We are reviewing internal records and working with our partners at USAFSAM to determine how this breakdown occurred,” the memo goes on.
The paper says that the baby room at the base’s child development center had a reading of 1.24 WLM/year (working level month per year) and the toddler room had a reading of 6.33 WLM/year. These are both much higher than the exposure limit of 0.8 WLM/year.
With the letter, there was a question-and-answer sheet that said radon “is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that can cause lung cancer.”
“The gas is odorless, colorless, and tasteless, so it cannot be detected by the human senses,” the memo says. “Radon is made when uranium breaks down in rocks, dirt, and water. Through cracks and holes in the base, radon can get into rooms.
The sheet then says that breathing in the gas can “increase your risk of developing lung cancer.” It says that smoking is the main cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. and that breathing in radon is the second most common cause of lung cancer after smoking.
Because of the mistake, the memo said that base civil engineering would be testing the building again over the next few weeks, would be closing the rooms that tested higher than the limit in the last round of testing, and would talk to the Environmental Protection Agency about “swift and complete mitigation techniques.”
The base also set up a priority scheduling system so that children who had been exposed could get medical help quickly. They worked with the child development center to make a list of people who might have been affected.
However, the letter also tried to calm parents’ worries about the subject matter.
“Although we are taking this matter seriously and making every effort to ensure mitigation of the existing actionable levels, your child’s risk of developing lung cancer as a result of the exposure at the Child Development Center is significantly less than 1%,” the memo states.
In a statement to Fox News Digital, an Air Force spokesperson said that the military branch is “reviewing internal records and working with our partners at USAFSAM to determine how” the oversight happened.
“It goes without saying that we take this seriously and we are implementing steps to ensure the safety of children and workers at the site while our bioenvironmental engineers conduct a thorough assessment and determine what level of radon is present and what mitigation steps are appropriate,” a spokesperson said. “We will provide regular updates as the investigation proceeds and ensure our Striker community is aware of our plans.”
Fox News Digital asked Whiteman Air Force Base for a response, but they didn’t answer right away.
