February 19: Karen Silkwood

Karen Silkwood, US chemical technician at the Kerr-McGee plutonium fields near Crescent, Oklahoma, activist and whistle-blower, was born on 19 February 1946.  She was the subject of the 1983 film, Silkwood. 10 things you might not know about her:

1. She was born and brought up in Texas, the oldest of three sisters.
2. At school, she played the flute, was on the volleyball team and a member of the National Honor Society. She was especially good at chemistry and went to college to study to be a medical technician.
3. In 1965, she married William Meadows, an oil pipeline worker. She had three children with him, but by 1972 the marriage had broken down due to his spending habits and because he was having an affair with one of her friends. She left him, giving him custody of the children and moved to Oklahoma City.
4. It was here that she joined Kerr-McGee, a company which produced Plutonium pellets for use in nuclear reactors. She also joined the local Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union and took part in a strike at the plant.
5. She was the first woman from the plant to be elected to the union's bargaining committee, and was given the job of investigating health and safety issues.
6. Her investigations soon uncovered any number of dangerous violations of health regulations - faulty equipment, insufficient training and monitoring, improper storage of samples and lack of adequate shower facilities at the plant. She and two colleagues went to Washington DC, to raise concerns with national union leaders and the Atomic Energy Commission.
7. She began carrying a notebook around with her to record any dangerous practices she found, becoming quite obsessive about it. She performed routine checks on herself and found that her body contained almost 400 times the legal limit for plutonium contamination, even on days when she'd only done paperwork. There was even contamination in her house, and some of her property had to be destroyed. The company had marked her as a troublemaker and counter-claimed that she'd contaminated herself to make the company look bad.
8. In due course, she'd collected enough evidence to go public. She contacted David Burnham, a New York Times journalist, and arranged to meet him, bringing with her a folder containing her findings. After a union meeting in a local cafe, she set off alone to make the 30 mile drive to Oklahoma City. She never arrived. She was found dead in her car, which had run off the road. The official report said she had fallen asleep at the wheel because there were traces of a sedative in her blood. She was 28.
9. There was however, damage to the back of her car, which her friends said was not there before, which wasn't explained by the official report of the accident. Her personal effects were recovered from the car, with one exception - her folder of evidence against the company, which was never found, although people who had been at the meeting were sure she'd had it with her when she got in the car. It has also been questioned whether she would have taken drugs before such an important meeting. In the weeks before her death, Karen had been certain someone was out to get her and had told her family about several threatening phone calls. However, there has never been enough evidence to prove foul play. The lawsuit filed by her family against the company in 1979 was the longest trial held in Oklahoma at that point. The jury found the company responsible for $10,000,000 in punitive damages. In the end, the company settled out of court and paid $1.38 million - but admitted no liability.
10. Her story was made into a film, Silkwood, in 1983 starring Meryl Streep in the title role, and a book by Richard L. Rashke, The Killing of Karen Silkwood, published in 2000. It's also been said that the assassination scene in The China Syndrome, a 1979 film, was based on what could have happened to Karen Silkwood - so much so that the jury in the Oklahoma trial were banned from watching it.

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