Wyoming History: Uranium Miner Was So Radioactive Grass Wouldn’t Grow On His Grave

Judd McDonald knows uranium, from participating in an out-of-control nuclear bomb explosion to being an underground miner and welder at a Nevada test site to blasting uranium out of a mine shaft in Jeffrey City for a few years.

Now 83, he has silicosis (scarring of his lungs) and polycythemia vera, a blood disorder where too many red blood cells are produced because his lungs are not providing enough oxygen to his body.

He’s the only one alive, that he knows of, who can tell the story from a miner’s perspective of how the late Wyoming Sen. Al Simpson and a Lander newspaper publisher helped get compensation and an apology for Wyoming miners and others in the nation who had been unwittingly exposed to radiation during the Cold War.

Many miners became so exposed they actually became radioactive and would register significantly on a Geiger counter. The grave of one even wouldn’t grow grass after he was buried, his wife reported.

Simpson, who died March 14 at age 93, had already served in the Senate for more than 10 years and had been a target of letters to the editor from miners and criticism in the media for not doing more to get compensation for Wyoming uranium miners dying of cancer.  

In the spring 1990, headlines in the West talked of a yearslong effort by the Utah congressional delegation, led by Rep. Wayne Owen and Sen. Orrin Hatch, to compensate uranium miners in their state and neighboring states — except Wyoming — for exposure to radon.

“State snubbed in bill compensating uranium miners,” the Casper Star-Tribune’s headline proclaimed in its April 17, 1990, edition.

The story quoted both McDonald and Ralph Olson’s wife, Mildred, who had failed to get compensation under Wyoming law following her husband’s death after spending years underground in Jeffrey City. She lost an appeal to the Wyoming Supreme Court in 1977.

McDonald was quoted in the story as stating that when he started at the Continental Mine in 1971, he was never warned about the dangers of radon poisoning and had to blow the smoke from blasts out with a hose.

He tells the same story today.

Initial Reluctance

The 1990 story stated that attempts to reach Wyoming U.S. Sens. Al Simpson and Malcom Wallop for comments about the Hatch bill were unsuccessful because they were out of the country.

Days later, Simpson told the Star-Tribune for its April 22, 1990, edition that no one had yet proved a cause-and-effect link between uranium mining and cancer.

One argument at the time was that Wyoming miners were dying of lung disease because of smoking and not necessarily radon.

But that summer, Simpson’s encounter with McDonald, other miners and widows of miners would fuel the senator’s fire to ensure justice was done.

“The reason that I am still alive is I didn’t work in (the mines) as long as some of the other guys did,” McDonald said. “A radon doctor told me that once radon daughters (decay particles) get in your lungs, it’s in there forever.

“So far, I have been pretty lucky not to catch (lung cancer), but I had a whole list of guy’s names who died of lung cancer out there.”

Ralph “Digger” Olson was on the list. He died of lung cancer in 1972 at age 43.

A Widow’s Persistence

Mildred Olson did not stop her quest. She went to her local paper in Lander as well.

In late spring 1990, then publisher of the Lander Wyoming State Journal,  Bill Sniffin remembers the day he agreed to sit down and hear the story Mildred Olson wanted to share.

“She told this fantastic story about all these men who had gotten cancer and that her husband Digger’s body was so radioactive that you could put a Geiger counter up to his body and it would go off,” he said. “And she claimed that grass wouldn’t grow on his grave. I will say that I never went and checked that out.”

Sniffin, now a columnist for Cowboy State Daily, said he decided to investigate the widow’s story, gathered reporters and outlined a plan for interviewing surviving Jeffrey City uranium miners.

That plan became a newspaper series they labeled “Why Did Miners Die?”

“We went around and interviewed everybody and found out that, yeah, all these guys were all catching this horrible cancer and it wasn’t smoking related, it was obviously something like radiation,” he said.

The newspaper team wrote stories, columns and an editorial cartoonist on the staff produced cartoons related to the story.

Sniffin said he also had a friendship with Simpson and asked Mildred Olson and some of the miners if they would meet with the senator. They agreed.

A Meeting

Sniffin called Simpson’s press secretary, Stan Cannon, also a friend. Sniffin recalls that Simpson was taking a flight, and so they set up a meeting with him at the Riverton airport.

“Here’s all these people and they start telling their stories, and he actually gets a little frustrated with them,” Sniffin recalled. “He said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ He was just stunned and of course from then on, he really picked up the ball. And we just kept doing our stories.”

McDonald attended the meeting and called it “beneficial” for the miners.

“It helped Senator Simpson get involved, to help push it, push that radiation exposure act on through.” McDonald remembers miner’s widows and some of the miners in attendance sharing with Simpson and one miner named Frank Espinosa “who brought his oxygen tank with him.”

“He died not too long after that,” McDonald said.

Cannon looks back at the time and remembers setting up the meeting but said he did not attend. He said Simpson was definitely moved that day to do what he could to help the Wyoming miners and it was a reversal from years of opposition to bills put forward by the Utah delegation in previous congressional sessions.

Simpson would not support the legislation because it did not include Wyoming miners. This time, he made sure Wyoming miners were added to the bill

Sniffin said when Simpson pushed to get the legislation passed, he asked him to compile his newspaper’s stories, columns and photos into a document that he could share with other legislators.

“When he came back to D.C., he made it clear that this was going to happen and a bill that had not gone anywhere for anybody for 10 years, Al Simpson was able to get through and get it done,” Cannon said.

 He said the bill passed through the Senate by unanimous consent with one amendment. Simpson was the minority whip at the time.

“This was a great example of how Al Simpson’s personality could bring both Republicans and Democrats together and be able to see what they needed to do and what was right and get this thing done for the people that had suffered so much before we even understood radioactivity and how damaging it is to human life,” Cannon said.

The Legislation

The legislation, called the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, created a $100 million fund for uranium miners in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming as well as people who were downwind of nuclear tests in Nevada, Arizona, and Utah or unwittingly part of nuclear testing to receive $100,000 if they could prove their health impacts as laid forth in the law. It also included an apology.

“This was a pretty big injustice to people who had given their lives so that we could have nuclear weapons in the ‘50s and ‘60s. But I think the important part for Wyoming is that Al held his ground until it took care of Wyoming,” Cannon said.

Cannon said though Simpson went all out to get the bill passed through Congress and signed by his friend President George H. W. Bush into Public Law 101-426 on Oct. 15, 1990, he gave credit for the legislation to the Utah delegation and wanted Sniffin’s role known as well.

“Al Simpson got things done and then stepped away and gave other people credit,” Cannon said. 

After the legislation was passed and Mildred Olson received her $100,000 check from the government for her husband’s death, Sniffin said he received a call from her. She had asked the bank to convert the check to cash and she was coming down to his office to take a photo of the money with him.

Sniffin tried to tell her that was unwise to walk down the street with that much money. But she insisted she was coming.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute, let me at least call the police department,’” he said. “They sent an officer or two over to walk down the street with her. I’ve got photos of her.”

A Nomination

Sniffin and the newspaper team received several journalism awards for the series and Simpson nominated the newspaper for a Pulitzer Prize — the most prestigious award in a journalism. Sniffin calls the story the highlight of his journalism career.

As publisher and owner of other newspapers in the state and around the region, Sniffin said it was “amazing thing” that she came into the office the day when he was around and available.

Sniffin said after the legislation passed, miners and their families signed a miner’s hard hat and presented it to him as a token of their thanks. It still hangs on a wall in his home.

“Stan always said that Al never had a chance if I had never written all those stories because they never would have heard about it and all of this would just have disappeared,” he said. “Often, we labor just quietly, and we never know if our stuff does any good. And boy, this was a time where we knew it did and that sure felt great.”

McDonald said he did not initially qualify for the compensation, but did after he developed the silicosis which was traced to his time at Nevada’s Yucca Flat test site. He was present for the “Baneberry Test” on Dec. 18, 1970, when the government detonated a 10-kiloton bomb 900 feet below the surface.

 The energy of blast unexpectedly cracked through the soil and sent a radioactive plume high in the sky that showered the test site with radioactive particles.

It was after the test site disaster that he relocated to Wyoming to work in the mines. He believes working in the dust and particles caused by blasting there also would have qualified him for the compensation.

McDonald said for many miners the compensation funds did not last long. He thinks the greatest impact of the legislation was the health coverage for the diseases that resulted.

“I have a nurse that comes once a week to check on me,” he said. “And when you get bad enough, they’ll take care of all your medical bills for your lungs … they’ll have a nurse who stays with you 24 hours a day when you get that bad. So that was a very good thing to come of it.”

Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.