Nothing makes you say awww, shucks quite like realizing you've misplaced 15 gallons of radioactive uranium ore right beside your popular taxidermy exhibit.
Yet in 2018, the museum at Grand Canyon National Park reportedly discovered that for 18 years, they'd accidentally been storing three 5-gallon containers of uranium right by where unsuspecting tourists and school groups were admiring dioramas of stuffed mountain lions and mule deer. The dangerous buckets of ore could have remained within proximity to the public for much longer, too, if it weren't for the fact that "the teenage son of a park employee who happened to be a Geiger counter enthusiast ... brought a device to the museum collection room," the Arizona Republic reports.
The museum's safety, health, and wellness manager Elston "Swede" Stephenson confirmed that "if you were in the Museum Collections Building between the year 2000 and June 18, 2018, you were 'exposed' to uranium by OSHA's definition." Worryingly, one of the buckets was apparently so full of uranium that the lid wouldn't close. Children would have been exposed to unsafe levels of uranium in as little as three seconds, and adults in less than half a minute.
Technicians have since removed the uranium from the Grand Canyon museum, although "lacking protective clothing, they purchased dish-washing and gardening gloves, then used a broken mop handle to lift the buckets into a truck," the Republic notes.
Stephenson said that as of now, there is "no current risk to the public or park employees." The Grand Canyon is one of the most popular parks in the country, with more than 4 million visitors a year.
