Every summer as a kid, Kevin
Patterson, 29, hiked up the Lukachukai-Ch’ooshgai Mountains, following
the hooves of the sheep and goats to his family’s camp. Up the steep
sandstone slope, the young shepherd would stop to rest at the local
spring, a paradise in the summer heat. This spring is one of the rare
spots on this side of the range where reeds abundantly grow. Locals
harvest the reeds for basket making, including the Diné basket commonly
used in ceremonies for healing. In 90-degree heat, the spring is a
refuge of mist and a place to quench your thirst.
Today, Patterson sits at his cubicle
at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, combing
through data to understand one of the biggest threats to his community
back home. As beautiful as his homelands are, they are contaminated by
uranium and vanadium. Between the 1940s and 1980s, uranium and vanadium
companies extracted these heavy metals from the Navajo Nation to make
nuclear weapons. In doing so, they initiated geochemical processes that
mobilized uranium and vanadium into groundwater sources.
In March, this region, now known as the Lukachukai Mountains Mining District, was designated a Superfund site
by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This means that the mining
district is listed for priority clean up by the federal government as a
Superfund site.
Although mining has stopped, the
threat is still there. There are more than 500 abandoned uranium mines
in the Navajo Nation that need to be cleaned up. Some date all the way
back to experiments with nuclear chain reactions at Columbia University
that helped start the Manhattan Project. According to the EPA, nearly 30 million tons of uranium ore have been extracted across the Navajo Nation, with families living close by many of these mines, mills and waste sites.
In 2005, the Navajo Nation banned the
transport of any nuclear waste going through its lands, an area the
size of West Virginia. However, Interstate 40, a major cross-country
interstate, crosses the southern section of the Navajo Nation; thus,
allowing exceptions to this ban on major highways like Arizona’s State
Highways 89 and 160. The ban also prohibits any future mining or milling
until all abandoned sites have been cleaned up. Earlier this spring,
the Navajo Nation Council and Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren
reaffirmed the ban by signing into law its position to call on the Biden administration to halt uranium hauling across Navajo lands.
There is only one place in the U.S.
where nuclear waste is processed: the White Mesa Uranium Mill in White
Mesa, Utah. The mill, operated by Energy Fuels, Inc., receives waste
shipments from as far away as the country of Estonia. The White Mesa
Mill is only about 20 miles from the Navajo Nation, just across the San Juan River. According to the Grand Canyon Trust, more than 700 million pounds of toxic waste sits at the mill site. Piles of uranium dust blow in all directions.
Near the Grand Canyon, tribes formed a coalition to prevent uranium mining from occurring at the Pinyon Plain Mine. Last summer, the Biden administration listened to the tribes of the region by designating 1 million acres near Grand Canyon National Park as the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument.
The national monument is the fifth national monument designated by the
Biden administration through an executive order proclamation.
The same united front has occurred at
Bears Ears National Monument in San Juan County, Utah., to prevent the
threats of uranium mining in the region from occurring. In 2016, the
Obama administration issued this proclamation. The Trump administration
reduced its size, but it was later restored by the Biden administration.
The designation of these ancestral lands as national monuments protects
Indigenous connections to these lands, but also for the beneficial use
for all.
Patterson studied Native American
Studies and Global Health at Dartmouth College and earned a master’s
degree in public health at Columbia, where he is now working toward a
doctoral degree in environmental health sciences. His research ranges
from the distribution of metal exposures in drinking water and diet
across Indigenous communities and their relationships with chronic
health conditions.
At his cubicle, he combs through data
to get a better understanding of how the legacy of uranium and other
metals impacts the entire Navajo Nation and other tribal lands. So far,
he has learned that the Indigenous communities he works with are exposed
to uranium, measured by uranium levels in their urine, at levels higher
than the general U.S. population and subsequently puts them at an
increased risk of cardio-metabolic disease and kidney dysfunction.
A study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine in 2000
found that Navajo men who worked in uranium mines had excessive risk of
lung cancer. The Navajo Birth Cohort Study, which is tracking pregnancy
and birth outcomes among mothers and babies living near abandoned
uranium mines, is another ongoing study. Researchers at the University
of New Mexico and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry
are working to establish connections between uranium exposure and birth
defects.
Patterson is calm, cool and
collected. He is very careful with his words. He is tall and handsome,
wearing preppy clothes in solid colors — an Indigenous, Ivy-Leaguer
vibe. There is no confusion about his purpose: He is here to give back
to his community, no matter how deep the opportunity cost is. If he were
not here sitting in a cubicle in Uptown Manhattan staring at a computer
screen, he could be back at home helping his family. Or doing
environmental health research near the Rocky Mountains.
“I grew up not so far from the
Colorado border,” Patterson says. “Being in the Rocky Mountains has
really influenced the way I see my environment.”
He said he thinks of his studies as
an environmental justice issue because some uranium mine workers, like
his grandfather, who were underpaid if they were paid at all, suffered
serious health consequences. The health problems of mine workers also
became a health burden for families like the Pattersons. His own mother
developed breast cancer, which the family attributes to uranium
exposure. Some of his grandfather’s brothers, cousins, and others of his
generation worked in the mining district, too. They not only exposed
themselves, but they also exposed their families to the radioactivity
from the mines when they came home from work in dirty clothes.
When Patterson was growing up and realized that his family was not the
only one exposed to uranium’s toxicity, he saw that the contaminant
harms whole populations. He wanted to understand this as a problem in
public health.
Patterson works as a Superfund
research trainee with the Health and Metals lab group at Mailman, which
explores the negative health effects from exposure to heavy metals. He
also works with Dr. Anne Nigra’s EPI Water Group, which looks at
reducing racial and socioeconomic inequities to environmental exposures
in public regulated water systems.
He is in the process of preparing for
his doctoral qualifying exams and was recently awarded a precision
medicine fellowship training grant to help fund his dissertation. So
far, Patterson has been published as a co-author in two publications,
the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology in August 2023, and in Nature Communications in
December 2022. He also penned a September 2023 editorial for
Environmental Health News about his work as Agents of Change for
Environmental Justice, advocating for the protection of Indigenous children through clean water access.
In the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology,
Patterson was part of a team that studied how drinking water from
unregulated wells and regulated community water systems is a significant
contributor to study participants’ internal dose levels of urinary
arsenic and uranium, even at low levels of exposure. The study relied on
data from the Strong Heart Family Study, which is one of the largest
longitudinal epidemiological studies among Native populations, and the
Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, which studies racial/ethnic
diverse urban communities across the U.S. The other study from December
2022 in Nature Communications
showed that there are no safe levels of exposure to arsenic or uranium,
particularly in Hispanic/Latino and Native American/Alaska Native
communities who seem to have high concentrations of both arsenic and
uranium concentrations in their regulated water sources.
“I hope that my work helps inform and
highlights the repercussions” of the legacy of the uranium mining and
milling, Patterson said, adding that the goal of his doctoral studies
and research is to help the Diné public learn how they’re exposed to
heavy metals and the steps needed to prevent more such exposures from
occurring.
The U.S. EPA designates Superfund
sites through a national listing that prioritizes federal dollars to
help with long-term clean-up efforts to contaminated, polluted sites.
The Navajo Nation EPA, which also receives federal dollars, has a
Superfund program that enforces the federal laws for cleanup. Near New
York City, there are four Superfund sites: Meeker Ave, Newtown Creek,
and Wolff-Alport Chemical Company in Queens, N.Y., and Gowanus Canal in
Brooklyn N.Y.
Patterson studies this data to find
regional patterns. Meanwhile, he wonders just how badly his own family
has been exposed, especially now that the whole area has been designated
a Superfund Site. This area includes Cove, Lukachukai and Round Rock,
Arizona; his families are from both Lukachukai and Round Rock.
The Lukachukai-Ch’ooshgai Mountains
are some of the highest peaks across the Navajo Nation, with Roof Butte
being the tallest and on the horizon from Patterson’s family sheep camp
at 9,823 feet.
“I do think that there has also been a
pretty personal interest of my own with the work that I’ve been doing
since childhood,” Patterson said.
He said he has a hard time digesting
whether to be OK with his community being designated a Superfund site.
In some ways, the designation does not change anything at all, except to
declare his homelands a priority for clean up by the federal
government. Actionable change starts with the community, and he said he
hopes that future Diné scientists will continue this work. But his
community will forever be impacted, regardless of clean-up efforts.
Whether the spring the sheep and goats drank from has traces of uranium
and vanadium remains to be studied.
“I
honestly don’t know what I would be doing instead. For this lack of
knowing otherwise, I feel justified in knowing that I’m doing work that
I’m called to,” Patterson said. “I’ve always wanted to pursue a PhD, but
the path there wasn’t always clear. Even now, the path forward after
the PhD is still unclear, but I want to make a difference for my family
and community.”