Survey Hopes To Get Health Snapshot Of Those Downwind Of Rocky Flats

DENVER (CBS4) - A new survey is taking a look at the health of residents who live east of the former Rocky Flats Plant.

Students at Metropolitan State University of Denver are behind the survey. They want to find out if there are any adverse health effects from people who live downwind from the plant.

The hope is to address concerns of people living in the surrounding communities.

The Rocky Flats Plant was a United States nuclear weapons production facility near Denver that operated from 1952 to 1992. Now 5,000 acres of the land has been converted into Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge.

"No one has, actually in this region, ever looked at the people living in that area and whether they have been affected in any way by the plant and the plutonium releases that happened during the fires that they do know about. Also, they stored barrels of waste out there, toxic waste, that eroded and then just seeped down into the ground," said MSU Denver professor Carol Jensen.

To be eligible for the survey, residents must have lived in the area from the plant east to Interstate 25 during the years the plant was in operation.