Nevada Test Site Radioactive Groundwater
Dann Weeks wrote an informative article last week in the Pahrump Mirror about radioactive groundwater making its way from the Nevada Test Site toward Beatty. Tests showed the groundwater contains radioactive contamination.
Next time you fill your glass with water from your tap you may want to carry it into a dark closet to see if it glows. The radioactive ingredient is Tritium. What is Tritium? Well it is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen.
That sounds like using the contaminated water for your shower, to brush your teeth, or shampoo your hair might be risky since it is absorbed through your skin.
According to the Argonne National Laboratory, EVS “Tritium is used as a component in nuclear weapons to boost the yield of both fission and thermonuclear (or fusion) warheads. Tritium is also used as a tracer in biological and environmental studies, and as an agent in luminous paints such as those used to make building exit signs, airport runway lights, and watch dials.”
“Tritium can be taken into the body by drinking water, eating food, or breathing air. It can also be taken in through the skin. Nearly all (up to 99%) inhaled tritium oxide can be taken into the body from the lungs, and circulating blood then distributes it to all tissues. Ingested tritium oxide is also almost completely absorbed, moving quickly from the gastrointestinal tract to the bloodstream. Within minutes it is found in varying concentrations in body fluids, organs, and other tissues. Skin absorption of airborne tritium oxide can also be a significant route of uptake, especially for exposure to high concentrations of tritiated water vapor, as could occur under conditions of high humidity during hot weather, because of the normal movement of water through the skin. For someone immersed in a cloud of airborne tritium oxide (HTO), the uptake by absorption through the skin would be about half that associated with inhalation. No matter how it is taken into the body, tritium is uniformly distributed through all biological fluids within one to two hours. Tritium is eliminated from the body with a biological half-life of 10 days, the same as for water. During the time it is in the body, a small fraction of the tritium is incorporated into easily exchanged hydrogen sites in organic molecules.”
“Tritium poses a health hazard only if it is taken into the body, because tritium decays by emitting a low-energy beta particle with no gamma radiation. This beta particle cannot penetrate deeply into tissue or travel far in air. The most likely form of uptake is as tritium oxide (or tritiated water), as the uptake of tritium gas is typically very low (less than 1%). Tritiated water behaves the same as ordinary water, both in the environment and in the human body. Hence, a significant fraction of the inhaled and ingested tritium is directly absorbed into the bloodstream. The health hazard of tritium is associated with cell damage caused by the ionizing radiation that results from radioactive decay, with the potential for subsequent cancer induction.”
“Lifetime cancer mortality risk coefficients have been calculated for nearly all radionuclides, including tritium.”
Environmental Working Group (EWG), a nonprofit organization, issued a report over the past weekend of their analysis of nearly 20 million drinking water tests conducted by water suppliers nationwide between 2004 and 2009 revealed hundreds of pollutants in U.S. tap water. For most, the government has set no safety-based legal limits. Many other contaminants were found in drinking water at concentrations above government-issued advisory health guidelines. They found Las Vegas, NV (Las Vegas Valley Water District) with many pollutants at levels exceeding government health guidelines.
Wonder how communities in Nye County came out in the study? You can find out on the EWG website by typing in your zip code on their Drinking Water Quality Report.
You can locate hyperlinks to the sources for the above on the Nye-Gateway to Nevada’s Rurals blog. I’m thirsty and will end this here and go get a drink of water.
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4 comments
We are living in a horrendous situation. If the development is for the human nature then how it could be possible that we shall not able to breathe fresh air or drink water, or eat food because of the invasion of technology. Now it is time to raise this issue immediately or we can loose abundance of life.
As long as humans tinker around with mother nature we risk making the planet uninhabitable.
What are the actual levels of tritium in the drinking water??
Tritium does occur naturally and will be in pretty much all drinking water sources at low (1-5 Bq/L) levels . The California public health goal (not an enforcable standard, just a goal) is 14.8 Bq/L based on a 1 in a million cancer risk from consuming 2L (~ 2 pints) of water every single day for 70 years.
EPA standard for tritium is 740 Bq/L (20,000 pCi/L).
I really don’t know Ed what the actual levels of tritium in the drinking water is. Depends I suppose on the geographical locale of the specific water source.
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