Africa and the nuclear world: Labor, occupational health, and the transnational production of uranium

Comparative Studies in Society and History

Volumn 51, Issue 4, 2009, Pages 896-926

  Hecht, Gabrielle ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HEALTH RISK; MINING INDUSTRY; OCCUPATIONAL EXPOSURE; PUBLIC HEALTH; RADIATION EXPOSURE; URANIUM; WORKPLACE;

EUROPE; GABON; JAPAN; NAMIBIA; NIGER [WEST AFRICA]; UNITED STATES;

EID: 77949782545     PISSN: 00104175     EISSN: 14752999     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S001041750999017X     Document Type: Article

References (120)

1. Office of Technology Assessment, Nuclear Safeguards and the International Atomic Energy Agency, OTA-ISS-615, Apr. 1995, App. B.
2. D. A. Holaday, "Some Unsolved Problems in Uranium Mining," in, International Atomic Energy Agency, International Labour Organisation, and World Health Organization, Radiological Health and Safety in Mining and Milling of Nuclear Materials: Proceedings, vol.1 (International Atomic Energy Agency, 1964), 51.
3. Gabrielle Hecht, "Nuclear Ontologies," Constellations 13, 3 (Sept. 2006): 320-31;
4. and "Negotiating Global Nuclearities: Apartheid, Decolonization, and the Cold War in the Making of the IAEA," in John Krige and Kai-Henrik Barth, eds., "Global Power Knowledge: Science, Technology, and International Affairs," special issue of Osiris 21 (July 2006): 25-48.
5. For broader debates, see Jean-François Bayart, "Africa in the World: A History of Extraversion," African Affairs 99 (2000): 217-267
6. I draw inspiration here from Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (University of California Press, 2005);
7. James Ferguson, Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order (Duke University Press, 2006);
8. Geoff Eley, "Historicizing the Global, Politicizing Capital: Giving the Present a Name," History Workshop Journal 63 (2007): 156-88;
9. Antoinette Burton. "Not Even Remotely Global? Method and Scale in World History," History Workshop Journal 64 (2007): 323-328
10. In this and other ways, we might think of radiation as "imperial debris"; see Ann Laura Stoler, "Imperial Debris: Reflections on Ruin and Ruination," Cultural Anthropology 23, 2: 191-219.
11. Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World Wa r I I (MIT Press, 1998);
12. Itty Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State (Zed Books and St. Martin's Press, 1998).
13. There is a range of scholarship on these themes: M. Susan Lindee, Suffering Made Real: American Science and the Survivors at Hiroshima (University of Chicago Press, 1994);
14. John Krige, "The Peaceful Atom as Political Weapon: Euratom and American Foreign Policy in the Late 1950s," Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 38, 1 (2008): 9-48;
15. Itty Abraham, "The Ambivalence of Nuclear Histories," in John Krige and Kai-Henrik Barth, eds., "Global Power Knowledge: Science, Technology, and International Affairs," special issue of Osiris 21 (July 2006): 49-65;
16. Joseph Masco, The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico (Princeton University Press, 2006);
17. Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (Pantheon Books, 1985);
18. Spencer Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Harvard University Press, 1988).
19. For a more extended discussion of technopolitics, see Hecht, Radiance of France. Other works that explore these themes include: Donald A. Mackenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (MIT Press, 1990);
20. Wiebe E. Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelite, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change (MIT Press, 1997);
21. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford University Press, 2005);
22. Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity (University of California Press, 2002).
23. Michelle Murphy, Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers (Duke University Press, 2006).
24. For how such issues relate to radiation exposure, see Adriana Petryna, Life Exposed: Biological Citizens after Chernobyl (Princeton University Press, 2002).
25. For exploration of "historical ontology" in relation to occupational and environmental health debates, see Christopher Sellers, "The Artificial Nature of Fluoridated Water: Between Nations, Knowledge, and Material Flows," in Gregg Mitman, Michelle Murphy, and Christopher Sellers, eds., "Landscapes of Exposure: Knowledge and Illness in Modern Environments," Osiris 19 (2004): 182-200; as well as other contributions to that special issue.
26. See also Christopher Sellers, Hazards of the Job: From Industrial Disease to Environmental Health Science (University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
27. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton University Press, 2005).
28. As one reviewer was kind enough to point out, this point resonates strongly with the argument made by the editors and contributors in Veena Das and Deborah Poole, eds., Anthropology at the Margins of the State (School of American Research Press, 2004).
29. Holaday, "Some Unsolved Problems," 51.
30. Peter H. Eichstaedt, If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans (Red Crane Books, 1994);
31. Robert Proctor, Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes what We Know and Don't Know about Cancer (Basic Books, 1995);
32. Valerie Kuletz, The Tainted Desert: Environmental Ruin in the American West (Routledge, 1998);
33. J. Samuel Walker, Containing the Atom: Nuclear Regulation in a Changing Environment, 1963-1971 (University of California Press, 1992).
34. F. Duhamel, M. Beulaygue, and J. Pradel, "Organisation du contrôle radiologique dans les mines d'uranium françaises," 63;
35. and D. A. Holaday and H. N. Doyle, "Environmental Studies in the Uranium Mines," 19; both in: International Atomic Energy Agency, International Labour Organisation, and World Health Organization, Radiological Health and Safety in Mining and Milling of Nuclear Materials: Proceedings, vol.1 (International Atomic Energy Agency, 1964).
36. D. Mechali and J. Pradel, "Evaluation de l'irradiation externe et de la contamination interne des travailleurs dans les mines d'uranium françaises," in, International Atomic Energy Agency, International Labour Organisation, and World Health Organization, Radiological Health and Safety in Mining and Milling of Nuclear Materials: Proceedings, vol.1 (International Atomic Energy Agency, 1964): 373.
37. Robert Avril et al., "Measures Adopted in French Uranium Mines to Ensure Protection of Personnel against the Hazards of Radioactivity," in Proceedings of the Second United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, Held in Geneva, 1-13 September 1958, Vol.21: Health and Safety: Dosimetry and Standards (United Nations, 1985), 63.
38. Robert Avril et al., "Measures Adopted in French Uranium Mines to Ensure Protection of Personnel against the Hazards of Radioactivity," in Proceedings of the Second United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, Held in Geneva, 1-13 September 1958, Vol.21: Health and Safety: Dosimetry and Standards (United Nations, 1985), 63., Ibid.
39. Philippe Brunet does an excellent job analyzing this history in his book, La nature dans tous ses etats: Uranium, nucleaire et radioactivite en Limousin (Presses Universitaires de Limoges, 2004).
40. Robert Bodu, "Compte-rendu de mission à Madagascar," Direction des Recherches et Exploitations Minières, Mars 1960, Cogéma archives, accessed 1998 and 2000;
41. Hecht, Radiance of France.
42. Author's interview with Mahata, Tsilamaha, Madagascar, 16 Aug. 1998. Interviews with Tandroy and Betsileo mineworkers were conducted with the aid of translators M. Abdoulhamide and Georges Heurtebize. Quotations that appear in italics indicate the words of the interviewee as related by the translators; insertion of the first person is mine, and replaces the translators' use of the third person.
43. Author's interviews with Fanahia and Itirik, Andolobé, Madagascar, 13 and 14 Aug. 1998; translator: M. Abdoulhamide. Although I did not know it at the time, such questions had their obverse in northern Madagascar, where miners speculated that sapphires were used in bombs. See Andrew Walsh, "In the Wake of Things: Speculating in and about Sapphires in Northern Madagascar," American Anthropologist 106, 2 (2004): 225-237
44. Fanahia interviews, op. cit. Such investments strategies contrast with the "daring consumption" that Andrew Walsh describes for some young men working in the 1990s in the sapphire-mining town of Ambondromifehy, in " 'Hot Money' and Daring Consumption in a Northern Malagasy Sapphire-Mining Town," American Ethnologist 30, 2 (2003): 290-305. The people I interviewed were, necessarily, long-term inhabitants of the region with deep social networks that bolstered and justified such investments; I do not know how migrant workers spent their wages.
45. Mahata interview, op. cit.
46. Fanahia interview, op. cit.
47. Author's interview with Jeremy Fano, Tranomaro, Madagascar, 18 Aug. 1998; translator: M. Abdoulhamide.
48. Antoine Paucard, La Mine et les mineurs de l'uranium français. II: Le Temps des conquetes (Editions Thierry Parquet, 1992), 323.
49. Author's interview with Joseph Ramiha, Tranomaro, Madagascar, 12 Aug. 1998; translators: M. Abdoulhamide and Georges Heurtebize.
50. Author's interview with group of women, Madagascar 1998, anonymity requested.
51. Author's interview with group of women, Madagascar 1998, anonymity requested, Ibid.
52. Fanahia interview, op. cit. This contrast was remarked upon by visiting CEA personnel as well: Robert Bodu, "Compte-rendu de mission a Madagascar," ix-4.
53. Marc Edmond Morgaut, "Mission à Madagascar pour le Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique du 11 au 21 novembre 1958," Cogéma archives.
54. Bodu, "Compte-rendu de mission à Madagascar."
55. Y. Legagneux, "Rapport d'Activité du Service 'Expoitation,'" May 1955, p. 21. CEA-DREM, Mission de Madagascar, Division du Sud. Cogéma archives.
56. An mR/h is a unit that measures the radioactivity level of a substance. It signifies milli Roentgens per hour. International Atomic Energy Agency, Manual on Radiological Safety in Uranium and Thorium Mines and Mills (International Atomic Energy Agency, 1976), 9.
57. The ICRP was started in 1928 as a group of physicists and radiologists trying to figure out how to limit their own occupational exposure to radiation. After World War II its membership grew and its aims broadened. By the mid-1950s, the ICRP was issuing recommendations on permissible doses for externally and internally absorbed radiation in all manner of occupations. For an insider history, see Roger Clarke and Jack Valentin, "A History of the International Commission on Radiological Protection," Health Physics 88, 4 (2005): 1-16.
58. For an insider history of radiological standards in the United States, see J. Samuel Walker, Permissible Dose: A History of Radiation Protection in the Twentieth Century (University of California Press, 2000).
59. Henri Jammet, "Les problèmes de protection posés dans l'extraction et le traitement de l'uranium et du thorium," in, International Labour Office, Radiation Protection in Mining and Milling of Uranium and Thorium (from a symposium organized by the International Labour Office and the French Atomic Energy Commission, in cooperation with the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency, Bordeaux, France, 9-11 Sept. 1974) (International Labor Office-Geneva, 1976), 3-10. All translations from the French are my own.
60. Massan Quadjovie, "Mesures techniques et administratives de radioprotection dans les exploitations d'uranium de Mounana," Radiation Protection in Mining and Milling of Uranium and Thorium (International Labor Office-Geneva, 1976), 141.
61. Xavier des Ligneris to Secrétaire Général, 8 July 1961; Xavier des Ligneris, "Consignes Relatives à la Protection Contre les Dangers dus à la Radioactivité," Mounana, 5 May 1961; approuvé par le Directeur des Mines du Gabon, Libreville, 1 June 1961, COMUF archives, Mounana, accessed 1998.
62. Pierre le Fur, Note de Service 072bis, 3 Sept. 1964, COMUF archives.
63. Henri Pello, Service Exploitation, Note d'organisation, "Stockage et distribution des film detecteurs de radioactivité," 26 Sept. 1966, COMUF archives.
64. Xavier des Ligneris, "Rapport - Contrôle des radiations," HR/AP no 2076, 5 Jan. 1968, COMUF archives.
65. Xavier des Ligneris, "Rapport - Contrôle des radiations," HR/AP no 2076, 5 Jan. 1968;
66. Xavier des Ligneris, "Rapport - sur le contrôle des risques radioactifs. Février 1968," YT/AP no 2169, 21 Mar. 1968, COMUF archives.
67. See, for example, Xavier des Ligneris: "Rapport - Contrôle des radiations," HR/AP n8 2076, 5 Jan. 1968;
68. "Rapport - sur le contrôle des risques radioactifs. Février 1968," YT/AP n8 2169, 21 Mar. 1968;
69. "Reference: Votre UF/JL/JF29/68," HP/MB no 210/69, 27 Jan. 1968;
70. and "Rapport sur le contrôle des risques radioactifs. Mois de Mai 1968," YT/LR no 2275, 20 June 1968, COMUF archives.
71. Paucard, La Mine et les mineurs, 96.
72. J. de Courlon to Xavier des Ligneris, 10 Mar. 1967, COMUF archives.
73. J. de Courlon to Xavier des Ligneris, 10 Mar. 1967, COMUF archives, Ibid.
74. Paucard, La Mine et les mineurs, 213; and author's interview with Christian Guizol, Paris, 26 Feb. 1998.
75. Author's interviews with Juste Mambangui and J.-M. Malékou, Mounana, Gabon, 16 July 1998; François Mambangui, Libreville, Gabon, 31 July 1998.
76. Ch. Guizol, "Rapport sur le contrôle des risques radioactifs. Mois de Décembre 1969," YT/sc no 0118/70, 9 Feb. 1970, COMUF archives.
77. Ch. Guizol, "Rapport sur le contrôle des risques radioactifs. Mois de Décembre 1969," YT/sc no 0118/70, 9 Feb. 1970, COMUF archives., Ibid.
78. Ch. Guizol, "Rapport sur le contrôle des risques radioactifs, Mois de Mars 1970," YT/sc no 0184/70, 27 Apr. 1970, COMUF archives.
79. The COMUF granted me free access to its archives when I visited in 1998. These were not at all organized, however, which made it impossible for me to find complete records on any single topic. Thus, though I did not find records of state inspections, I cannot state conclusively that none took place.
80. "Consigne pour la distribution et l'emploi des explosifs," COMUF, Exploitation de Mounana, n.d. (ca. 1959), COMUF archives.
81. Author's interview with Marcel Lekonaguia, Mounana, Gabon, 21 July 1998.
82. Author's interview with Dominique Oyingha, Mounana, Gabon, 17 July 1998.
83. Oyingha interview, op. cit.
84. Christian Guizol letter to Directeur Général de la Caisse Gabonaise de la Prévoyance Sociale, 19 Oct. 1970, Objet: Allocations familiales de M. Lekonaguia Marcel; Christian Guizol letter to Directeur Général de la Caisse Gabonaise de la Prévoyance Sociale, 26 Oct. 1970, Objet: Monsieur Lekonaguia; J. C. Andrault letter to Docteur C. Gantin, 27 Oct. 1970, COMUF archives.
85. Oyingha interview, op. cit.
86. "Loi no. 11/2001 du 12 décembre 2001 fixant les orientations de la politique de prévention et de protection contre les rayonnements ionisants," Hebdo informations, Journal hebdomadaire d'informations et d'annonces légales 451 (23 Feb. 2002): 22-23 (Gabon).
87. Jules Mbombe Samaki, "Memorandum sur la nécessité de la prise en compte de la Veille sanitaire et du dédommagement des anciens travailleurs miniers," private communication, Libreville, 25 Apr. 2005.
88. See also reports in the Gabonese press: "Le Collectif des anciens travailleurs miniers interpelle la Comuf," L'union, 3 Feb. 2006;
89. and "Les anciens travailleurs miniers de la Comuf réunis en collectif," L'union, 17 Feb. 2006.
90. Samira Daoud and Jean-Pierre Getti, "Areva au Gabon: Rapport d'enquête sur la situation des travailleurs de la COMUF, filiale gabonaise du groupe Areva-Cogéma," Sherpa, 4 Apr. 2007, http://www.asso- sherpa.org/.
91. "L'observatoire de Mounana," L'union, 1 June 2007.
92. S. F. Oosthuizen et al., "Experience in Radiological Protection in South Africa," in Proceedings of the Second United Nations International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy (United Nations, 1958), 25-31.
93. Thomas Borstelmann, Apartheid's Reluctant Uncle: The United States and Southern Africa in the Early Cold War (Oxford University Press, 1993);
94. Margaret Gowing, Independence and Deterrence: Britain and Atomic Energy, 1945-1952 (Macmillan Press, 1974);
95. Jonathan E. Helmreich, Gathering Rare Ores: The Diplomacy of Uranium Acquisition, 1943-1954 (Princeton University Press, 1986).
96. These were listed as "factors which influenced cases sent to autopsy by the medical attendants (personal interests and bias, etc.), religious grounds for relatives refusing autopsy, type of cases treated in the hospital (e.g., special clinics), etc." Oosthuizen et al., "Experience in Radiological Protection."
97. On apartheid science, see Saul Dubow, A Commonwealth of Knowledge: Science, Sensibility and White South Africa 1820-2000 (Oxford University Press, 2006).
98. R. E. Albert (U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Division of Biology and Medicine), memo to files, subject: "Medical Services in the South African Gold Fields and the Shinkolobwe Uranium Mine." NV0727618 in U.S. Department of Energy, Nevada Test Site electronic archives.
99. For an analysis of how population categories have only recently changed in American medical research, see Steven Epstein, Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research (University of Chicago Press, 2007).
100. For example: C. G. Stewart and S. D. Simpson, "The Hazards of Inhaling Radon-222 and Its Short-Lived Daughters: Consideration of Proposed Maximum Permissible Concentrations in Air," in Radiological Health and Safety in Mining and Milling of Nuclear Materials: Proceedings, vol.1 (International Atomic Energy Agency, 1964), 333-357
101. J. K. Basson et al., "Lung Cancer and Exposure to Radon Daughters in South African Gold/ Uranium Mines," Atomic Energy Board: PEL 209, Pelindaba, Mar. 1971 (English-language abstract).
102. R. G. Beverly letter to J. T. Sherman, 25 May 1971, subject: report titled "Lung Cancer and Exposure to Radon Daughters in South African Gold/Uranium Mines," NV0061126;
103. R. D. Evans letter to C. R. Richmond, 2 June 1971, subject: "Report on Lung Cancer and Exposure to Radon Daughters in South African Gold/Uranium Mines," NV0061125, Nevada Test Site electronic archives (both letters were given the quoted titles by the archives).
104. A. H. Wolff letter to I. Mitchell, subject: "Lung Cancer and Exposure to Radon Daughters in South African Gold/Uranium Mines" (no enclosures), 10 June 1971, NV0061124;
105. M. A. Schneiderman (National Cancer Institute) letter to Deputy Assistant Administrator for R & D, Environmental Protection Agency, subject: "Report Concerning White South African Gold Miners and Bronchiogenic Cancer," June 18, 1971, NV0061122;
106. V. E. Archer letter to A. Wolff, 16 June 1971, subject: Preliminary Report re: "Lung Cancer and Exposure to Radon Daughters in South African Gold/Uranium Mines (Criticisms of Report)," NV0061123, all in Nevada Test Site electronic archives, which conferred the quoted titles.
107. A. J. A. Roux to W. P. Viljoen, 16 May 1979, internal ref. LB/35/6/10, Shaun Guy, "A Review of Files at the Government Mining Engineer Concerning Radiation in Mines and Works," 26 Aug. 1986, 3, Shaun Guy private papers.
108. Interview by the author and Bruce Struminger with Shaun Guy, Johannesburg, South Africa, 12 July 2004. Guy generously gave me copies of the documents he had collected.
109. Guy interview, op. cit.
110. Basson, "Lung Cancer and Exposure to Radon Daughters," 12.
111. Guy interview, op. cit.
112. "Results of Radon Daughter Sampling in Bird Reef," West Rand Consolidated Mines, Ltd., Mine Office, West Rand, 13 Dec. 1973, Shaun Guy private papers.
113. Shaun Guy, "Memorandum: Meeting at West Rand Consolidated with the Mine Manager, 24 February 1986." LB/35/6/10/8, Shaun Guy private papers.
114. For a discussion of the "union situation" that the manager mentioned, see T. Dunbar Moodie with Vivienne Ndatshe, Going for Gold: Men, Mines, and Migration (University of California Press, 1994).
115. U.S. Atomic Energy Commission Licensing Branch, "Report of the Underground Survey for Radon Daughters at West Rand Consolidated Mine, 5 March 1986," 23 May 1986, p. 5, LB/35/1/13; LB/35/6/10/8, Shaun Guy private papers. By this point, the South African Atomic Energy Board had changed its name to the Atomic Energy Corporation of South Africa.
116. "Draft: South African Energy Policy: Discussion Document: Comment," 2 Oct. 1995, 1, 11, Papers of the office of the Assistant Adviser on Safety and Environment, Chamber of Mines, accessed privately in May 2004, 8.
117. A. H. Munro letter to M. Golding, 2 Mar. 1995, papers of the office of the Assistant Adviser on Safety and Environment, Chamber of Mines, accessed in May 2004, 5. For the 1990 ICRP recommendations, see Annals of the ICRP 21, 1-3, esp. pp. 25-32.
118. D. G. Wymer, "Note for the Record: Meeting between the Chamber and Marcel Golding, Cape Town, 7 June 1995," 14 June 1995, papers of the office of the Assistant Adviser on Safety and Environment, Chamber of Mines, accessed in May 2004, 9.
119. For one example among many, see Jock McCulloch, Asbestos Blues: Labour, Capital, Physicians & the State in South Africa (James Currey, 2002).
120. Jay H. Lubin et al., "Radon and Lung Cancer Risk: A Joint Analysis of 11 Underground Miners Studies," NIH report 94-3644 (National Institutes of Health, 1994).