When I last checked in with 82-year-old Ivory Mae Thomas, a former Kansas City Plant worker, she wasn't sure what she'd been contaminated with, but she knew it was bad.
Twenty-one years ago, Thomas was working the night shift as a janitor when her supervisors told her to drop everything and rush to the facility's medical station. There, they had her change clothes and scrub her skin with special soap. Afterward, employees in masks and goggles followed her home and cleaned her carpets. Ever since that day, Thomas says, her health has been failing.
Now, 21 years later, Thomas is getting some answers via Channel 41's Russ Ptacek. Through some heavy-duty FOIA-ing of governmental agencies (Ptacek estimates he's received upwards of 10,000 pages of documents, with more on the way), Ptacek was able to shed some light on what may have contaminated the plant the day of Thomas' incident.
Ptacek let me tag along to visit Thomas at her home; her son David
Hunt met us there to look at the paperwork Ptacek brought with him.
Ptacek's documents -- including a National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health Dose Reconstruction Report -- indicated that a February 1989 "promethium spill"
at the Bannister Federal Complex presented a safety hazard to workers,
and four workers' homes tested positive for radiation. The documents claim that the chemical element, also
referred to as PM-147, came to Kansas City from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Ptacek asked Thomas whether she remembered anyone from the plant ever following up with her about the substance she may have been exposed to, or whether any radioactive material was found in her home.
"I don't think they told me that, I really don't," Thomas answered. "They told me nothing."
After hearing Ptacek's information, Thomas' son was all the more convinced that exposure to harmful chemicals at the Kansas City Plant caused his mother's extensive health problems, which include a weakened heart, surgery to remove half her lung and the removal of a benign tumor in her chest. "She went through a lot, to not be compensated," Hunt said.
Both NBC Action News and The Pitch have filed FOIA requests for more specific documentation on the promethium incident. Watch KSHB Channel 41's investigative coverage tonight to see Ptacek's interview with Thomas.
Photo by Nadia Pflaum.
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Is it sad that I think that an almost equally large story is the fact that a local TV news reporter is actually doing in-depth investigative journalism, instead of ambushing local business people who may or may not have wronged someone outside the door to their house?
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