Oases in Navajo desert contained 'a witch's brew'

Judy Pasternak, Times Staff Writer reports on this truly sad story quite thoroughly.

It is hard to imagine going through what these people did. From my background in the nuclear field, I am intimately aware of the effects of higher levels of radioactivity on people and animals. This effect is exaggerated when the contamination is taken internally. I am a little disgusted that the miners were not required to seal up or fill in their mines to minimize external contamination. I find it a little strange that they lived so close to so much natural supply of radioactive material and had not suffered from similar contamination of their water supply before. I suspect they were more isolated from the deposits initially and over time spread in that direction by chance. Hopefully the education program and some decisive steps to seal or fill in the mines will help to curtail this in the future.