Radiation In Your Water: Fracking and Uranium

Radiation In Your Water:

Fracking and Uranium

 

Two Major US Aquifers Found to Be Saturated with Uranium

 

by Joshua Krause

Researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have just completed a comprehensive analysis of roughly 275,000 water samples from 62,000 locations across the United States. These samples were mostly derived from two massive underground aquifers that supply drinking water for millions of people, and what they reveal about the safety of drinking water in America is absolutely horrifying.

They found that the parts of the High Plains Aquifer (also often referred to as the Ogallala) is saturated with uranium at a level that is 89 times higher than the EPA’s safe limit. The southern half of California’s Central Valley was even worse, with a uranium concentration that is 180 times higher than the EPA’s “maximum contaminant level.”

Altogether, almost 2 million people live above the most contaminated sections of these aquifers. The research suggest that the uranium contamination is being caused by agricultural activities. The nitrates in fertilizers and animal waste can cause the oxidation of naturally occurring uranium, which makes it more water-soluble.

However, this research won’t come as a surprise for many Americans. Two years ago it was revealed that Texas state officials had been concealing the radioactive content of state drinking water for many years, so this is no isolated incident. In truth, the toxicity of the drinking water found across America, is an open secret.

From Activist Post @ http://www.activistpost.com/2015/08/two-major-us-aquifers-found-to-be-saturated-with-uranium.html

Fracking Creates Massive Radioactive Waste Problem

 

 

By Sayer Ji

The EPA openly acknowledges that fracking fluid contains "thousands of chemicals," but nowhere is there mention of radioactivity in its risk assessments. Now, a new study reveals the "natural gas" industry may be hiding a secret as dark and deadly as the one the nuclear industry has been trying to conceal for decades. 


With recent news that California's fracking industry will be "repurposing" its toxic wastewater to meet the needs of an agricultural industry driven desperate by the drought, a timely new study published in Environmental Health Perspectives reveals fracking wastewater is not just a source of dangerous petrochemicals but also a highly toxic form of radioactive waste.

Titled, "What's NORMal for Fracking? Estimating Total Radioactivity of Produced Fluids," the new study tested the hypothesis that fracking wastewater contains the same naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) found in the shale deposits that it is produced from as a drilling byproduct. The primary radionuclides of interest include ²²⁶radium, ²¹⁰polonium, and ²¹⁰lead, which are decay products of ²³⁸uranium and ²²⁸thorium, and which are normally safely locked away deep within millions of years old geological formations.

The study focused on the heavily drilled Marcellus Shale, a vast swath of marine sedimentary rock found in eastern North America, and which is known to have about 20 times higher levels of radioactivity from high uranium content compared to most other shales.1  In 2010, the uranium deposits within the Marcellus Shale were identified by University of Buffalo researchers as being susceptible to being solubilized and made mobile by fracking fluids. The researchers determined that when these fluids inevitably come back to the surface in the form of millions of gallons of wastewater they can pollute streams and the ecosystem with hazardous waste.

 

Fracking Releases Radioactivity Normally Locked Away Deep Within The Earth

 

 

The new study confirms the above mentioned concerns. Researchers at the University of Iowa obtained a 200-liter drum of fracking wastewater obtained from the Marcellus Shale region in 2012. The sample was measured for existing levels of radioisotopes, and then estimates were made for the total radioactivity that would be produced within the fluids in the future if left within a closed space. They confirmed the presence of radioactive radium, polonium, and lead. They also measured an increase in the decay products ²¹⁰lead and ²²⁸thorium.  Finally, they determined that the radioactivity would continue to increase for more than 100 years due to the formation of the decay products of ²¹⁰lead and ²¹⁰polonium.

This is not the first time that a radioactivity problem with fracking wastewater has been cited in the published literature. For instance, a report published in Environmental Science and Technology in 2013 found that fracking wastewater discharge by the Josephine Brine Treatment Facility in Pennsylvania lead to ²²⁶radium concentrations that were approximately 200 times higher than normally expected in stream sediments near the facility.²

 

Fracking's Radioactivity Could Be As Dangerous As Nuclear Power's Releases

 

 

Clearly, the "natural gas" industry has a new PR nightmare on its hands. Already there is a growing public awareness that fracking is an extremely destructive and non-sustainable method to extract energy from the earth, uses and contaminates billions of gallons of water annually, and may even contribute to increase seismic events like earthquakes. But until now few if any realized that the fracking/natural gas and the nuclear industry share the same dark secret that they both routinely release significant quantities of radioactive waste into the environment whose toxicological implications last for centuries, if not for thousands of years (e.g., ²²²radium's half-life is 1600 years). The releases are not just the byproduct of accidents. The nuclear power industry actually releases highly carcinogenic plumes of radioisotopes into the environment during the course of normal operations. For instance, they routinely schedule government approved releases of up to 500 times higher than normal levels when they refuel their reactors.

Even the coal-powered power plants produce millions of tons of radioactive waste, which we recently touched upon in our exposé on the possible use of coal fly ash for covert geoengineering progams in the U.S. and abroad. In many ways, as evidenced by the Fukushima multi-core meltdown, the problem with radioactive waste contamination is so profound and widespread that for the most part the media won't even touch the issue. To the contrary, nuclear power is often described in the mainstream media as a "cleaner" form of energy because it does not produce the same carbon emissions as fossil fuel-based forms. This suffices to distract from its true harms to human and environmental health. 

Given the widespread problem of denial, it is not surprising that present day fracking regulations do not account for radioactivity at all. The EPA, in fact, focuses on drinking water and groundwater contamination by the admittedly "thousands of chemicals contained in fracking fluid" as the most salient issue, and determined in its 2015 fracking risk assessment that while it did find evidence that fracking has caused contamination and does pose a risk to drinking water resources, "the number of identified cases where drinking water resources were impacted are small relative to the number of hydraulically fractured wells."³

The truth is that low-dose radioisotope exposure no matter what the specific source of contamination has been proven to be several orders of magnitude more dangerous to health than present day radiological risk assessment standards presently specify. This is because health risk evaluations are based on gamma-radiation associated effects, based mainly on outdated observations of atomic bomb blast survivors from WWII, long before DNA and low-dose radioisotope mediated DNA damage was even discovered. Uranium, however, being an alpha particle and not a gamma radiation emitter, can have up to 1 million fold increased toxicity to DNA than would be expected by its radiolytic decay alone. The implications of this are astounding, and speak to just how dangerous releases of radioisotopes are when looked at through the lens of a more nuanced, modernized, and evidence-based risk assessment lens. 

The truth about low-dose radioisotope exposure's true risks have been hidden for quite some time, including by the tobacco industry, who knew as far back as the 1950's that the contamination of tobacco with polonium was driving high lung cancer incidence in smokers but refused to admit it because addressing the problem by removing ²¹⁰polonium would have reduced their product's nicotine content, addictiveness, and therefore profitability.

This new study should help to bring to the awareness of the public that there is absolutely nothing natural about the "natural gas" industry, and that fracking may combine the worst outcomes of both the fossil fuel (petrochemical) and nuclear power industries, as far as the ultimate forms of damage wrought upon human and environmental health. Now that the wastewater from fracking is being used to grow food, it is all the more pressing that we become engaged and active on the issue -- that is, unless we don't mind being force fed fracking chemicals and radioactive material in our produce in the near future.* The time has come to take a stand and withdrawal all support from energy and agricultural production models that result in the atrocious toxic fallout of this kind. 

To get more involved on the issue check out Americans Against Fracking.

*ironically, conventional produce may also be blasted with nuclear waste to "cold pasteurize it."

 

References

 

¹http://energy.wilkes.edu/pages/184.asp
2Warner NR, et al. Impacts of shale gas wastewater disposal on water quality in western Pennsylvania. Environ Sci Technol472011849–11857.11857; 10.1021/es402165b [PubMed]  
3 http://www.eesi.org/articles/view/epa-releases-fracking-risk-assessment

From Green Med Info @ http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/fracking-radiation-natural-gas-industrys-worst-pr-nightmare-1

For more information about nuclear issues see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/nuclear  

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Chemtrails are Nothing: Irrefutable proof we are all being sprayed with poison: 571 tons of toxic lead 'chemtrailed' into America's skies every year

Chemtrails are Nothing:

Irrefutable proof we are all being sprayed with poison: 571 tons of toxic lead 'chemtrailed' into America's skies every year

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

America is being doused every minute of every day with the toxic heavy metal lead as it is burned in "avgas" -- aviation gas, the fuel that powers most piston-driven aircraft (i.e. anything with a propeller). A grand total of 571 tons of lead are dumped each year into the air over our heads from aircraft alone, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (1)

According to a scientific paper titled, "Lead and Halogen Contamination from Aviation Fuel Additives at Brackett Airfield," (2) X-Ray Fluorescence instrumentation was used to analyze lead, chlorine and bromine content in avgas liquids. The tests showed avgas contains the following:

Lead: 48 ppm
Bromine: 42.6 ppm
Chlorine: 605.2 ppm

Lead is a highly toxic heavy metals that causes bone diseases, brain damage and cancer. Chlorine is a highly-reactive chemical with powerful oxidative properties. The fact that both are being sprayed daily into the air above America is inexcusable.

964 tons of lead released into the air (from all sources)

How much lead is being "chemtrailed" across America due to aviation fuel? According to General Aviation News (3), about 681,000 gallons of avgas were burned each day in 2013.

Avgas weighs approximately 6 lbs per gallon, meaning over 4 million pounds of avgas is burned each day, or over 1.8 million kg of avgas.

If lead is 48 ppm in avgas, that means each kg of avgas contains 48 mg of lead. Multiplied by the 1.8 million kg of avgas burned each day, this means avgas fuel is emitting 86.4 kg of lead PER DAY in the skies over our heads. Over a year, that's 31,536 kg of lead dumped directly into our air, and that lead falls onto our farming soils, forests, lakes, rivers, streams, oceans, children's playgrounds, cattle ranches, and so on.

The National Emissions Inventory says that lead emissions are even higher than what I've calculated here. "Piston-engine aircraft are the chief source of lead emissions in the United States, emitting 57% of the 964 tons of lead put into the air in 2008, according to the most recent figures from the National Emissions Inventory," reports the NIH. (4)

Small aircraft pilots dismiss the problem

 

Some pilots seem inclined to dismiss this problem entirely. "I'm hooked on lead. Maybe not in the way a junkie is addicted to drugs, but hooked nonetheless," writes Air & Space Magazine columnist David Freed, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist. (5) "The tetraethyl lead added to aviation fuel helps keep the engine of my four-seat, 48-year-old Piper Cherokee running smoothly. And that keeps me happy."

He goes on to lament the idea that cleaner lead-free fuels might make him unable to afford to fly: "We live in dread of fuel costs continuing to rise and of FAA airworthiness directives, which often require us to pay for expensive, usually safety-related modifications. Will a government-mandated switch to unleaded fuel ultimately break the bank, leaving us little recourse but to quit flying and sell our airplanes...?"

Later in his article, he does acknowledge that lead is a public health hazard, but he explains that his airplane contributes virtually nothing to the problem: "But is the exhaust from my airplane's 180-horsepower engine really that significant a national health threat...?" he asks. He's right that his one airplane isn't much of a factor in all this, but in a collective sense, if you combine all the piston-driven aircraft flown by pilots like Freed, it becomes a huge issue nationwide. Avgas emissions are the number one source of lead emissions into the skies of America.

(David Freed, by the way, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Cordell Logan aviation mystery novels. He's a great writer and obviously a thoughtful, intelligent person... almost certainly a likeable guy and a valuable contributor to society in many ways as an investigative journalist. For example, he authored an 8,600-word expose in The Atlantic which detailed how "the FBI pursued the wrong suspect in a string of anthrax murders following 9/11." Obviously, this is the kind of investigative journalist we like to support in the mainstream media -- people who ask real questions and search for truth. So to be clear, I'm not attacking him in a personal sense over his article; I only hope he reconsiders the importance of the aviation industry getting the lead out of its fuels and thereby out of our skies. We need thoughtful, intelligent people on the leading edge of this issue if we ever hope to have lead-free avgas become a reality.)

As the following EPA chart shows, avgas is the No. 1 source of lead emissions, followed by "industry" in the No. 2 spot, then coal-fired power plants third ("electric generation").

By the way, where does all this lead end up? Much of it appears in the food supply, of course, because plants absorb lead from soils and grazing animals eat and concentrate toxins from plants. This is why heavy metals are often higher in milk or meat than in raw grass. It's also part of the reason why I keep finding lead in so many foods when I run atomic spectroscopy tests in my ICP-MS laboratory. Click here to see lead results on cacao, grasses, pet treats, protein products and more.

If I ever happen to fly airplanes, you can bet I'll find a way to burn unleaded gasoline. I'm not going to streak across the sky dumping toxic heavy metals into the atmosphere, especially since part of my current mission is to explore ways that society can develop cleaner food with lower heavy metals. Even better, I would hope to one day see a huge breakthrough in battery power density that could result in, believe it or not, electric airplanes. (Yes, it seems impossible today because it would require at least a 1000-fold increase in battery power density. But humans are really good at achieving remarkable breakthroughs, so I'm going to remain optimistic on this point and hope the scientists can find a far better way to store power than today's current old-school chemical batteries.)

 

Lead was removed from automobile gasoline by the EPA

 

As you explore all this, keep in mind that lead used to be added to regular gasoline for many decades. Lead helped engines run better and improved gas mileage. But it also resulted in millions of pounds of lead being dumped directly into the environment, increasing lead contamination of soils and causing people to inhale lead with every breath.

Children's IQs in America noticeably dropped during those "lead years," and IQs were restored to higher levels once lead was removed from gasoline. Today, it is illegal to add lead to gasoline and burn it in vehicles.

But it's perfectly legal to burn lead in aviation fuel. "Avgas is one of the few fuels in the United States that still contain lead, leaving it the single largest source of lead emissions in the country," reports the National Institutes of Health (4). "Concern over the health effects of lead has sparked a contentious effort to finally get the lead out of avgas -- something the aviation and petroleum industries have been attempting for more than two decades, to no avail."

The NIH goes on to describe the harmful effects of lead:

Lead is a well-documented neurotoxicant that is particularly harmful to children, who are typically exposed when they ingest or inhale lead-containing dust in the home. In recent years, serious harm to cognitive and behavioral functions including intelligence, attention, and motor skills has been demonstrated in children with much less lead in their blood than previously thought to cause harm, and it is now understood there is no safe level of lead exposure.

When will we decide to stop poisoning ourselves?

 

What's clear in all this is that as long as we keep burning lead in avgas, we're going to keep suffering the health effects on the ground. In an age where the academic achievements of American children are routinely overshadowed by children in India, China or Korea, the continued dumping of IQ-damaging lead into our atmosphere seems absurd. What you dump into the sky falls onto the soils and eventually makes its way into the food supply, too, so burning lead in airplanes sooner or later results is all of us eating lead on our dinner plates.

How big of a problem is this in the really big picture? Arguably it's not the most urgent problem we face. Even I would argue that our nation's power grid vulnerability to high-altitude EMP weapons is a far greater threat to us all (especially with North Korea playing around with long-range ballistic missiles carrying with nuclear weapons).

In an era when war seems to be breaking out in the Middle East, and the global banking system seems forever on the verge of collapse, it's difficult for society to focus on the more subtle (but chronic) long-term problems like lead in avgas. But this is a problem that can be solved with a phased switchover to mogas (unleaded fuel). All that's required is some leadership by the FAA and EPA working together to clean up our aviation industry and get the lead out of our skies.

Is it too much to ask that we stop dumping toxic lead into the skies above our own heads?

Sources for this story include:
(1) http://www.epa.gov/ttnchie1/net/2008inventor...
(2) www.naturalnews.com/files/Lead-Avgas-Airport...
(3) http://generalaviationnews.com/2013/01/02/pr...
(4) http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/121-a54/
(5) http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/the-...

From Natural News @ http://www.naturalnews.com/045563_aviation_fuel_toxic_lead_heavy_metals_pollution.html

And see The Men Who Stare At Scapegoats @ http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-men-who-stare-at-scapegoats.html


For more information about lead poisoning see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/lead%20poisoning
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