Excerpt:

The Navy will present its proposed cleanup plan for Site 32, a 60-acre site on the northwest corner of the former runway area at Alameda Point at a meeting next week at Alameda Main Library. Site 32 is the last of the Navy’s cleanup sites at the Point awaiting a certified plan, or remedy. The site, which will one day become part of a regional park, consists of buildings, a concrete bunker, roads, runways, a parking lot and open grassland, including more than nine acres of seasonal wetlands.

The primary contamination at the site is Radium-226 that the Navy used in luminescent paint for aircraft instruments and markers. Radium is a radioactive metal found in trace amounts in the natural environment in virtually all rock, soil, plants and animals. Trace amounts are permitted in public drinking water. Chronic exposure to elevated levels of the metal through ingestion, however, can lead to serious health risks. Radium in large underground rock formations can produce hazardous radon gas, but this is not the source of radium at Alameda Point.