New Jersey's radioactive water

[ensho]

http://his.rsoe.hu/alertmap/index2.php


A tap turns on in a Hammonton kitchen. Water comes out, clear and tasteless. It is used to fill a water bottle, make coffee, cook pasta, and complete many other daily tasks. It also is radioactive, as is virtually every drop of water ever pumped from South Jersey’s soil. Radium, a naturally occuring, radiological element that results from decaying uranium and thorium, is ever present in some concentration in sand and rock around the world. It is typically found in a solid form but dissolves into water under certain conditions. It is particularly soluble in acidic water, such as that found in South Jersey, which is made even more acidic from heavy agricultural fertilizer use. “The very sandy soils that exist in southern New Jersey are very acidic to start with, so they’re extremely naturally vulnerable to this kind of issue,” said Zoltan Szabo, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey New Jersey Water Science Center. Szabo and
other USGS researchers recently completed a nationwide survey of the radium issue, which they expect to release by the end of the year. The study found that while radium is found throughout drinking water nationwide, it is in higher concentrations in specific circumstances such as those found here.

“Southern New Jersey just happens to be one of these areas where geology and geochemistry come together to create this problem,” Szabo said. Hammonton is the latest municipality to deal with the issue and is in the process of retrofitting one of its treatment plants to filter the contaminated water. But public-water supplies in Buena, Buena Vista Township, Bridgeton, Egg Harbor Township, Upper Deerfield Township, Stow Creek Township, and Vineland all have had problems in the past. The well water here has been influenced by forces from tens of millions of years in the past, when prehistoric rivers flowed through the region, depositing sediments from faraway mountains that now sit far underground. The sand and mud that formed South Jersey is filled with these decaying rock fragments, emanating radiation into the surrounding water that is then pulled to the surface and consumed. In the majority of cases, this is not a problem. The traces are so low that they have
few measurable effects. But in certain places, particularly the agricultural belt stretching along the western Atlantic County border, down into Cumberland and Salem counties, human activities have roused these ancient deposits to affect people in ways that are yet unseen.

“People should be aware of it,” said Karen Fell, acting assistant director of water-system operations for the state Department of Environmental Protection. Radium in drinking water is measured in picocuries per liter, an infinitesimal measurement of a sample’s radioactivity. The federal limit in drinking water is 5 picocuries per liter. Above that, the Environmental Protection Agency says a person would have a 1 in 10,000 chance of developing cancer if he or she drank two liters of it every day for 70 years. Quarterly tests required by the state of public water suppliers found that two wells in Hammonton had levels of radium just above that limit in recent years. Wells in Vineland have had radium concentrations six times the limit. “The important thing to remember is you’re talking about really minute amounts,” said Fell. “It’s not like you’re going from a thimble full to a truckload
full.” Nevertheless, local governments have been forced to spend millions of dollars to address the issue, building new treatment plants, digging new wells or installing filters into current facilities, which is what Hammonton is doing. But the problem is also prevalent in private wells, where testing is less regular.

The Private Well Testing Act, which took effect in 2002, requires that tests take place at the point of sale for a home, but homeowners testing their own wells after that point is relatively less common, Fell said. “Those water tests are really complicated,” said Joe Wiessner, owner of Joe Wiessner Realty in Hammonton. “You need a Ph.D. to decipher some of it.” Luckily, dealing with the issue is also relatively easy. Szabo said his research has found that a well-maintained water softener can remove about 95 percent of the radium. The human body excretes the majority of radium it absorbs, the EPA says, but about 20 percent of it is absorbed into bones and remains to damage tissues. “There are certain things you don’t worry about so much,” said Kenneth Miller, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, “but with groundwater, I’d be concerned.”
Radium has become a concern in drinking water only in the past 20 years, when higher-than-expected levels were detected throughout the state. A new testing method discovered at the end of the 1990s also found that radium levels were higher than initial tests found, and suddenly a variety of public-water supplies throughout the state had concentrations in excess of healthy standards.

At the same time, radium used to be common in everyday life. In the early 20th century, shortly after radium was discovered, people were unaware of its danger and were fascinated with its luminescence, the EPA said. It was in a variety of consumer products, such as hair tonic, toothpaste, ointments, beverages and, most prominently, glow-in-the-dark watches, the EPA said. Those uses were eventually ceased for health reasons. Radium in drinking water, however, will exist for conceivably as long as people pump their water from underground. That leaves it up to public water suppliers and private well owners to be aware of the issue, and address it as necessary.
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sigh

[JustAnotherGen]

1. Thanks

Will bookmark for later. Makes me think twice about drinking water down the shore . . .