RADIOACTIVE CONTAMINATION Test sites are safe, residents are told

The locations were used to help develop the atomic bomb during World War II.
DAYTON (AP) -- Residents worried that four sites used to help develop the atomic bomb during the 1940s still might have radioactive contamination have been assured by the federal government that the sites are safe.
The sites include a laboratory, a warehouse, a former seminary and a former playhouse that were used to produce, refine and store a radioactive substance.
Sampling shows the sites meet all safety guidelines and pose no threat to people or the environment, David Romano, project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Monday. Radiation and lead levels at the sites proved no different than the average levels for other sites sampled in southwestern Ohio, the corps said.
The corps' study was done at the request of state and local officials and residents who were concerned the sites might not have been properly cleaned in the 1940s, following the work there during World War II.
The sites had been contaminated with polonium -- the radioactive material used to trigger the chain reaction in the atomic bomb.
Public concern was heightened in 1997, when the U.S. Department of Energy proposed taking the sites off its cleanup list.
The agency said the sites had been checked in the 1970s and there was no evidence of a hazard. And they said polonium has a half-life -- the time needed for half of the atoms to disintegrate -- of only 138 days and had long since decayed.
But local officials wanted to make sure the sites had been cleaned to current standards before the government crossed them off the list.
What is there
The sites include:
UThe former Bonebreak Theological Seminary in west Dayton. The three-story building was decontaminated in the 1940s, and 100 truckloads of debris were dumped at the Mound nuclear weapons plant south of Dayton. The building was returned to the Dayton Board of Education in 1950 and later used as a maintenance and machine-repair building for the school district.
UA private recreational facility known as the Runnymede Playhouse in suburban Oakwood. The facility, which included a ballroom, indoor tennis courts and a stage for community theater, was dismantled. Wood flooring and metal materials were burned, and 160 truckloads of contaminated materials were sent to the Mound plant. The property was transferred back to the original owners in 1950. Single-family homes sit on the site.
UA laboratory in south Dayton. The lab was demolished and the property sold to a chemical company in the 1980s.