A soil sample with an elevated level of plutonium taken along the eastern edge of Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge is more than five times the cleanup standard established for the radioactive substance at the former nuclear weapons plant northwest of Denver, state health officials said Tuesday. (emphasis added)

But Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment toxicologists “do not believe there is an immediate public health threat,” the department said in a letter penned to community members.

“We do believe that further sampling and analysis is needed to assess what this elevated sample may mean for long-term risks, and whether it is an isolated instance or a sign of a wider area of relatively high contamination,” said Jennifer Opila, director of CDPHE’s Hazardous Materials and Waste Management Division. “We are taking the sample result seriously because it is much higher than previous samples in the vicinity and higher than the cleanup standard.”

CDPHE said the soil sample in question, taken on the west side of Indiana Street about a mile north of 96th Avenue, returned a result of 264 picocuries per […]