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Six more workers at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state were taken to a medical clinic for exposure to radioactive fumes, bringing the total number of affected workers to 26. Fumes have reportedly been leaking from waste tanks since last week.

The six workers were outside the tank farms. Three reported smelling suspicious odors, and three others requested medical evaluations because of odors last week, according to The Tri-City Herald.

The Hanford nuclear site holds radioactive waste stored in underground tanks that is left over from the past processing of plutonium used in the nation’s nuclear weapons program, beginning with the Manhattan Project.

The vapors are associated with the chemical portion of the waste. The latest incident of sickness brings the total number of employees evaluated for possible exposure to chemical vapors to 26 since Thursday. All 26 have returned to work, but are concerned about long-term health problems.

The Hanford site is on the Columbia River in East Washington. It stores 56 million gallons of radioactive chemicals, two thirds of which is radioactive waste stored in tanks built between the 1940s and 1970s.

“They [tanks] were not supposed to last more than ten to twenty years, twenty years was a dream in the first place,” State Representative Gerry Pollet (D-Seattle) told RT. “Some of them didn’t last twenty years and we had a small explosion in the 1950s where hot waste boiled, created a steam explosion under the tank, and we were lucky we didn’t have half of Eastern Washington permanently evacuated.”