Florida Makes It Harder for Residents Living on Radioactive Soil From Former Phosphate Mines to Sue (insideclimatenews.org)

“What happens when you get exposure to radioactivity?” Andy Mele remembers the man asking earnestly as he pulled up his shirt. The man, who looked like he couldn’t be older than 35, exposed his swollen belly to the Florida sun, covered in bulges protruding from under his skin, Mele said. He then parted his hair with his fingers to show Mele the lumps growing on his scalp. “Well, you know, you get brain cancer, you get blood cancer, you get bone cancer,” Mele told him. The pair stood in the yard of the wood-framed bungalow where the man lived, bordering a church in the town of Mulberry, Florida. Moments before, Mele, a long-time environmental activist, had tramped all over the man’s property with a rented Geiger counter, measuring the radioactivity near his outdoor workshop. “It was just ferocious,” said Mele, president of the Peace + Myakka Waterkeeper, a regional environmental advocacy organization. He has walked through countless backyards like this one over the last few years, collecting data on radiation levels in a major phosphate mining area known as Bone Valley in central Florida. Phosphate mining in the state now spans over 450,000 acres, much of it undertaken by a...