Tritium is a very low-energy emitter. Maybe in extremely high doses, it would be a problem, but trace amounts are hardly a worry. Tritium is the least worrisome radioisotope.
...however, according to an assessment by the New York Department of State as part of its Coastal Zone Management Assessment, contains a variety of radioactive elements such as strontium-90, cesium-137, cobalt-60, and nickel-63, and isn’t limited to tritium contamination.
Okay, some of those are very high energy emitters, and can do quite a bit of physical damage, with death occurring at high levels of exposure. However, at low exposures, they are not a problem. And the blog does not say how much of each radioisotope was found; my guess is that only trace amounts, barely above the level of detection, were found. (Otherwise, they would cordon off the area until it could be cleaned up.)
Unexpected increases were detected in 19 out of 20 major types of cancer. Thyroid cancer registered the biggest increase, going from 13 percent below the national average to 51 percent above.
The problem with trying to say anything definitive based on "cancer clusters" is that, through random distribution alone, clusters happen. I read a few years ago that some agency (EPA, maybe) decided to no longer conduct investigations upon finding a disease cluster, since every investigation done to date had found the cluster due to random variability.
In any case, tritium does not cause thyroid cancer. Strontium-90 can affect the thyroid, as can any radioactive form of iodine. Leukemia is a common cancer that develops after radiation exposure, since high doses of radiation damage and kill the rapidly growing cells in the bone marrow, which produce blood.
My trust in any federal agency telling the truth about this is zero. Especially the EPA.
Cesium and strontium are nasty customers too. Cesium tends to destroy bone marrow and I believe strontium accretes in the liver.
That said, I find this whole article full of vague alarmism and pseudoscientific hyperbole.
Nice to see somebody that knows the details of radiation risk and what background exposure means. Thank you for posting the science.