Florida Makes It Harder for Residents Living on Radioactive Soil From Former Phosphate Mines to Sue

“What happens when you get exposure to radioactivity?” Andy Mele remembers the man asking earnestly as he pulled up his shirt. The man, who looked like he couldn’t be older than 35, exposed his swollen belly to the Florida sun, covered in bulges protruding from under his skin, Mele said. He then parted his hair with his fingers to show Mele the lumps growing on his scalp. 

“Well, you know, you get brain cancer, you get blood cancer, you get bone cancer,” Mele told him. The pair stood in the yard of the wood-framed bungalow where the man lived, bordering a church in the town of Mulberry, Florida. 

Moments before, Mele, a long-time environmental activist, had tramped all over the man’s property with a rented Geiger counter, measuring the radioactivity near his outdoor workshop. 

“It was just ferocious,” said Mele, president of the Peace + Myakka Waterkeeper, a regional environmental advocacy organization. He has walked through countless backyards like this one over the last few years, collecting data on radiation levels in a major phosphate mining area known as Bone Valley in central Florida.

Phosphate mining in the state now spans over 450,000 acres, much of it undertaken by a single company, The Mosaic Co. The phosphate rock, used to make fertilizer, contains varying concentrations of naturally occurring radioactive uranium and radium. During the mining process, the concentration of these elements can increase. After the mining is done, Florida law mandates that the land must be “reclaimed,” and housing developers have snapped up some of the properties. 

Construction of houses and mobile home parks on the land has led to lawsuits that claim the public was not warned of the potentially radioactive soil. One complaint, a class action filed in 2020 against Mosaic and real estate developers, claimed that the ground under two mobile home parks, Paradise Lakes and Angler’s Green, was tainted with decaying uranium and radium. Now, a new state law, House Bill 167, will make future litigation like that more difficult to pursue.  

House Bill 167, which took effect on July 1, offers a simple way for landowners to force anyone suing them over phosphate-related radiation to meet a higher standard of evidence than in the past. The landowners must file a request with the Florida Department of Health for a gamma radiation survey at no cost to them, which would then be filed in county records and serve as notice to the public. 

“The legislature is creating a specific carve-out that really is, at this point, strictly for Mosaic,” said Chris Nidel, one of the attorneys who represents the residents of Paradise Lakes and Angler’s Green.

A fertilizer industry behemoth with a presence across the world, from Brazil to Saudi Arabia, Mosaic has land holdings in Florida alone that total over 368,000 acres. While it is not the only phosphate company operating in Florida, Mosaic likely stands to benefit the most from the new law, given its large footprint. Legislative records show that Mosaic paid multiple lobbyists to push for HB 167. 

In Mosaic’s U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, the company explained that its “long-term future land use strategy is to optimize the value of our land assets,” giving the example of the development of a secluded golf course resort, Streamsong Resort, in an area of previously mined land. The company later reported a gain of approximately $57 million on the sale of the luxury resort. 

The new law, Nidel said, is “just the Legislature being bought by Mosaic’s interest in protecting itself from something that the EPA has said, over a decade or more of work, is a hazardous condition that threatens the health and wellbeing of thousands of people in central Florida.”

Asked for comment about the new law, Mosaic said in a statement that “HB 167 brings much‑needed clarity and predictability to owners of former phosphate mining lands.”

“By establishing a clear, science‑based process for surveying and documenting site conditions, it avoids the prospect of strict liability for natural conditions,” the company said. “Importantly, this law gives landowners and communities confidence while opening the door to new opportunities for development. This is especially meaningful for rural regions, where responsible land use and long‑term investment fuel economic growth.”

Mosaic did not respond to a further request for comment about the 2020 lawsuit.

In a 2025 SEC filing, Mosaic cited liabilities related to “elevated levels of naturally-occurring radiation that arise on formerly mined land” that could adversely affect the company’s liquidity or financial condition. The company further noted in the SEC filings that “environmental justice considerations could have a material adverse effect on our business.”

A 2003 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report, cited in the 2020 lawsuit, stated that the median gamma radiation exposure, the kind of radiation that passes through the skin and into the organs, was approximately 2 to 3 times greater on reclaimed phosphate mining areas than background levels. However, in the years that followed the report’s publication, Nidel said, little action was taken to warn people living in affected communities of the hazardous material under their homes.

Gamma rays, which are pure energy, are widely considered one of the most dangerous forms of ionizing radiation.

“Gamma rays have so much penetrating power that several inches of a dense material like lead, or even a few feet of concrete may be required to stop them. Gamma rays can pass completely through the human body; as they pass through, they can cause ionizations that damage tissue and DNA,” the EPA reported in a radiation overview.

The EPA reported in 2003 that an estimated 40,000 homes were built over former phosphate mines in the region. Since then, the number of such housing developments has likely only grown, said Nidel.

At the two mobile home parks, Angler’s Green and Paradise Lakes, the 2020 lawsuit stated that exposure to levels of radiation similar to those identified in the two communities “translates to residents receiving over one chest X-ray per week—with obviously no diagnostic or health purpose whatsoever.”

When pregnant with her daughter about a decade ago, Alexis Pappas lived in a rented manufactured home in Paradise Lakes. She said the community was a quiet “family trailer park,” and while “the landscaping wasn’t all there,” it served its purpose as “basically, just a place for us to sleep.”

No one ever notified her family that the manufactured home they rented sat on top of a former phosphate mine, she said. When she learned about the potential hazard from a news article online, she immediately called her dad.  

“I brought my daughter home there, and my sister was living there while pregnant for some time, so our biggest concern was not for us, but for the children,” Pappas said. “If it was truly disclosed to us, I highly doubt I would have brought my child there, or my sister would have brought her baby home there.”

Radium-226 and other radionuclides were documented by government scientists in the soil at Paradise Lakes and Angler’s Green, the complaint said. The half-life of radium-226 is approximately 1,600 years, meaning that, absent remediation, the risk of gamma radiation exposure “will remain for thousands of years,” the lawsuit said. Even exposure to low doses of uranium byproducts, the complaint said, can increase the risk of numerous cancers, including leukemia, lymphoma and bone and thyroid cancer. 

Pappas’ sister, who is now in her 30s, has since developed multiple tumors in her bones. “They said it was rare for someone her age to get it,” said Pappas. “Is it the phosphates or not? Is it the radioactive decay? Who really knows?” 

The problem is, most people do not know how to navigate public records and will likely not realize the land’s full history when deciding where to live, said attorney Ryan Ellis of The Lanier Law Firm in Texas, who has worked on multiple cases related to housing on phosphate-mined lands.

“That’s not at all the type of notice, say, a renter is going to go out and look for when they are choosing a place to live and raise their family,” said Ellis. “It doesn’t require the property owners to notify people in their lease agreements or otherwise that this is a former phosphate mine and that they may be exposed to elevated levels of radiation. It just requires them to, essentially, bury this notice in the county records, which most renters aren’t going to go out and see.”

Under the statute, Ellis said, it’s also not required for people buying a home to be notified. “Good luck to anyone going out and shopping for a property in the future—you are not going to have notice given to you,” he said. “Good luck finding it in the public records, if you even know how to navigate those. I am a lawyer and, for me, it is hard enough to navigate those, let alone just an ordinary person.”

“Don’t We All Live on Phosphate Mines Down Here?”

The 2020 lawsuit isn’t the first filed in Florida over radiation exposure on former phosphate-mined land. A 2017 lawsuit alleged that the Drummond Company, Inc., an Alabama-based mining conglomerate that developed mined land in Lakeland into two housing subdivisions, falsely assured the public that the land did not pose a health risk.

Before construction began on the housing developments, Oakbridge and Grasslands, the company extracted phosphate from remaining material left from old mining operations, then “reclaimed” the land to develop housing, the lawsuit alleged. The reclamation process involves using the overburden and sand tailings produced by mining to fill in and contour the ground, in accordance with Florida law. In some cases, a layer of topsoil is added and trees are planted to shore up the land.

According to the complaint, the U.S. Department of Energy found that the Drummond developments were “highly likely in need of additional remedial action, as the gamma radiation levels found on the land were anywhere from 2.5 to 8 times greater than baseline background levels.” In 2024, the plaintiff reached a confidential settlement, according to the law firm representing the homeowner.

The Drummond Company did not respond to Inside Climate News’ request for comment on the 2017 suit.

Not far from the Drummond subdivisions is the Christina Hammock community. It looks like a typical central Florida housing subdivision with cement block homes built on small lots. There are lakes, which resident Beverly Willey, 77, says aren’t really lakes; they are old mining pits. The development, she said, is built atop the old Christina phosphate mine.

“Don’t we all live on phosphate mines down here?” she asked. 

Aside from that one time a guy went swimming in the big lake, got bit by an alligator and ended up in her neighbor’s yard holding a hatchet, there’s not a lot of news in the community, Willey said. 

However, she has noticed a lot of her neighbors have gotten sick. Willey herself had breast cancer. “There have been a lot of cancers in our neighborhood,” she said.

Willey, who lives in a beige cement block home, said that when she and her husband purchased their house about a decade ago, they did not receive a notice of any kind that the house was built on mined land, but she already knew about the property’s history from word of mouth. At the time, she wasn’t too concerned. “Maybe I should have been,” she said. 

After they moved in, nodules started to sprout up on her and her husband’s thyroids, she said. “We ended up with many nodules, so we had our thyroids yanked out,” Willey said. “The nodules were changing, and they had to keep doing biopsies, and it was ridiculous.” 

A retired nurse, Willey worked for a nearby endocrinologist, who, she said, had a theory that the pollution from the mines was causing a lot of thyroid cancer in the community. “It was scary,” she said. 

Willey said she wasn’t aware of the new law, but regardless, she wouldn’t have any interest in suing. “How do you prove it?” she asked. “It’s not like black lung from working in the coal mines.”

Sponsored by state Reps. Lawrence McClure and Richard Gentry, both Republicans, the bill passed through the House and then cleared the Senate with a bipartisan vote before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed it into law. McClure and Gentry’s offices did not respond to requests for comment. 

The new law establishes a defense for what’s known as “strict liability,” a legal concept that holds a defendant liable for committing an action, regardless of the intent or mental state. In civil cases involving strict liability, the plaintiff does not need to prove the defendant was negligent, according to a bill analysis issued by the Florida Senate.  

But now, a plaintiff suing over phosphate-related radiation would have to prove that the company or individual was somehow negligent, which is a higher bar in court. 

Past landowners of former phosphate mines could also benefit. While only current owners can go through the steps to enact the liability protection, previous landowners, including phosphate mining companies, could piggyback off the current owner’s filing, said Ellis, the attorney. 

“That is one potential read of the statute that would endanger a lot of people who rent properties in Florida. That is a huge problem,” Ellis said.

Meanwhile, residents will face steeper financial burdens to pursue legal action, said Nidel, the attorney. The law stipulates that residents who want to file a lawsuit must hire, at their own expense, a certified health physicist or radiation protection technologist to test their property.

“It requires the homeowner to expend thousands of dollars before even making it to the courthouse. It is a toll bridge on the way to the courthouse,” says Ellis. 

By contrast, the law will provide gamma radiation surveys to companies seeking liability protection for free. The Department of Health determined it would need $3 million in funding per year to carry out those surveys, according to a Florida Senate bill analysis and fiscal impact statement. 

The Department of Health did not respond to a request for comment on the new law.

Rachael Curran, an environmental attorney at Stetson University’s Jacobs Public Interest Law Clinic for Democracy and the Environment, worries that the new law could lead to more housing developed on formerly mined land. 

“Some people might then think, ‘Well, this is the only affordable housing I can get,’” Curran said. “If there was nothing wrong with these reclaimed lands, why are you interested in this liability shield? No other types of lands have it. I wouldn’t want to live there.”