Well, they’ve gone and done it. A company in Florida got last-minute approval last week from Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency to build a practice road using radioactive materials. It seems like such an obviously bad idea, but a bad idea never stopped the government.
The new road, courtesy of Mosaic Fertilizer, is described as a small scale pilot project going up on the company’s private property in a New Wales, Florida, the Hill reports:
In the past, the agency has raised concerns about the use of this material in road building. It said in 1992 that use of phosphogypsum in road construction created risks for both construction workers and also anyone who later builds a home where the phosphogypsum road had once been.
The agency now says that members of the public are not expected to come into contact with the road.
However, Mosaic, which will build the road, has described the effort as part of a pilot project that will “demonstrate the range of … road construction designs.” It’s not clear if additional road construction will follow — though doing so would likely require further approvals.
Florida is the number one producer of phosphogypsum waste in the world. It usually just sits around in big piles mucking up the joint, which no one is happy about. Mosaic wants to find a use for the material, so it can get rid of its garbage while making a little profit off of it. Naturally, people who care about the environment and public health are a little pissed. While the danger to the public may be minimal, construction workers are at a much greater risk. From the Hill:
Ragan Whitlock, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a written statement that the EPA’s decision was “mind-boggling.”
“That dramatically increases the potential for harm to our road crews and water quality,” Whitlock said. “The EPA has bowed to political pressure from the phosphate industry and paved the way for this dangerous waste to be used in roads all over the country.”
Phosphogypsum is formed “When processing phosphate rock to make fertilizer, the phosphorous is removed by dissolving the rock in an acidic solution,” according to the EPA. The remaining substance contains radium, which then off-gases radon (you know, the stuff we were terrified of in the late ’80s/early ’90s.)
Using the slightly radioactive substance in road building has been a hot topic for decades. Congress actually amended the Clean Air Act in 1992 to expressly forbid the use of phosphogypsum in road construction, though it remained eligible for use in other projects on a case-by-case basis. The Trump Administration approved phosphogypsum use in road construction in 2020, but the incoming Biden administration put a halt to that approval, calling the new rules for use of the radioactive substance too broad reaching. Florida also passed legislation in 2023 to allow the company to build the road, but it all hinged on EPA clearance first.
The EPA now says Mosaic can have a little radioactive road, as a treat, because the company made some pretty good arguments. First, the new road is small, an experiment on private land owned by Mosaic. The company claims the public will never come in contact with it. Mosaic also said, hey, is phosphogypsum really worse for humans in big piles rather than locked up in a road? The EPA reconsidered and allowed construction to go forward despite its own description of phosphogypsum as something you do not want to mess around with:
Phosphogypsum is a solid waste byproduct from processing phosphate ore to make phosphoric acid that is later used in fertilizer. The phosphate ore and the resulting phosphogypsum contain radium, which decays to form radon gas. Both radium and radon are radioactive and can cause cancer.
While Mosaic now says no public will come in contact with the test road, that isn’t really how radiation works when introduced to the environment. And besides, the very use of a test road is so that future public production road could be put into the works.
What’s interesting is there are several unintentionally radioactive roads in the U.S. already. YouTuber Radioactive Drew found a radioactive road running near Fairmount Hot Springs around Butte, Montana, that showed radiation 10 times higher than background. Drew says he found similar levels in Pocatello, Idaho and Soda Springs, Idaho. He guesses the contamination came from, you guessed it, local phosphogypsum mining. While he says the material should never been used, it is not dangerous to most people. As someone who’s had cancer twice however, I can’t help but feel like I’m not included in “most people.”
