Uranium in the environment resulting in workers exposed to high levels of radiation. Conventional uranium ore treatment mills create radioactive waste in the form of tailings, which contain uranium, radium, and polonium. Consequently, uranium mining results in "the unavoidable radioactive contamination of the environment by solid, liquid and gaseous wastes". Inhalation of radon gas caused sharp increases in lung cancers among underground uranium miners employed in the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1940s and 1950s, uranium mill tailings were released with impunity into water sources, and the radium leached from these tailings contaminated thousands of miles of the Colorado River system. Between 1966 and
Uranium tailings stored aboveground and allowed to dry out, the radioactive sand can be carried great distances by the wind, entering the food chain and bodies of water. The danger posed by such sand dispersal is uncertain at best given the dilution effect of dispersal. The majority of tailing mass will be inert rock, just as it was in the raw ore before the extraction of the uranium, but physically altered, ground up, mixed with large amounts of water and exposed to atmospheric oxygen, which can substantially alter chemical behaviour. Uranium tailings contain over a dozen radioactive nuclides, which are the primary