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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Coal is a Killer & Carcinogen, So Why Use It?

 

How many people die each year from the use of coal?  At least 24,000 just from the particulate matter, (according to the two doctors quoted below).   That is more than from traffic accidents and murders each year.   What form of life does coal not manage to damage or kill?  Maybe cockroaches, but not many other living things can thrive in dirty polluted air or in the filth left behind when coal is used.  It’s even killing cows and dogs.  And amazingly, they put coal ash in toothpaste.

Elisa Young says she has lost at least six neighbors to cancer in the last ten years.

“I’ve lost neighbors to lung cancer who have never smoked,” she said. “I’ve lost them to brain cancer, breast, throat, colon, multiple myeloma, pre-leukemia. When my son, who’s in his 20s, came home to visit, he said, ‘Mom, is it normal for your mouth to taste like metal?’ We pulled over and he coughed until he got sick.”

Young has no doubt about what she believes is causing all the cancer: coal. For the past 10 years she’s lived in Meigs County, Ohio, the center of the second largest concentration of coal plants in the nation, and has become an environmental activist.

“There isn’t a house on this road that hasn’t been touched by cancer… I had melanoma and I currently have two more precancerous conditions for breast and thyroid cancer, none of which are in my family,” said Young, 47. “My dog died of cancer, my best friend’s dog died of lymphoma. I just gave up a dog because I couldn’t afford to take him into the vet. He was getting lumps on him.”

Each year, coal-burning power plants release nearly 100 million tons of toxic fly ash into wet ponds, rivers and landfills, according to a 2009 report by Earthjustice, an environmental legal advocacy organization. A 2007 risk assessment by the Environmental Protection Agency found that people who live near one of these coal ash waste sites have as high as a 1 in 50 chance of developing cancer, as well as an increased risk of damage to the lungs, kidneys, liver and other organs as a result of exposure to toxic metals. 

Further, says the report, the danger to wildlife and ecosystems is “off the charts.” Linking exposure to specific diseases can be difficult to prove scientifically — it has not been definitely proven that exposure to toxic fly ash caused the sicknesses in Meigs County.

Despite these findings, the Environmental Protection Agency has deemed coal ash a “non-hazardous waste” since 1988, a classification that allows fly ash to be dumped into ponds with no protective liner and re-used as pavement, building materials, fertilizer, potting soil and even toothpaste.

In October of 2009, the EPA finally re-evaluated the dangers of toxic coal ash and proposed new rules to regulate coal waste disposal, but the proposed regulations have been stalled for five months at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, headed by Cass Sunstein. During their deliberations over the past few months, Sunstein’s staff has met with representatives of the coal and fly ash industries approximately 35 times, but has only met with a handful of citizens personally affected by coal ash. According to a press release issued by Ohio Citizen Action last week, Sunstein has not made any public trips to see the real-life effects of coal ash on some of America’s poorest communities.” . . . 

READ MORE HERE

From another article, the health dangers to people of using coal:*  These are severe risks to peoples’ lives.
“Coal-fired power plants pose a major threat to public health. Yet, Dominion Resources is clearing land to build a new coal plant on the Clinch River. While Dominion suggests the proposed plant as a solution to increasing energy demands, the facility would create a host of new environmental and public health threats. The proposed plant would be a conventional coal-fired power plant, one that would spew out tons of pollutants that lead to asthma, heart attacks and even brain damage.

The daily stream of toxic nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds flowing from the plant would contribute to the formation of ground level ozone. These pollutants are known to contribute to asthma and chronic bronchitis, increased heart rhythm irregularities, chest pain episodes and fatal heart attacks. In addition, the particulates emitted by the facility are linked with low birth weight and preterm births that can lead to other health problems and development delays in the first year of life. And of real concern to parents would be the large volumes of mercury that plant would release into the air and waterways of Virginia.

Power plant pollution continues to be a public health menace. A recent study by Abt Associates has demonstrated that nearly 24,000 people die each year in America because of particulate matter pollution from coal plants. This death toll exceeds the mortality from drunken driving (17,000 a year) and homicides (approximately 18,000 a year). More locally, coal plants in Virginia and those plants west (upwind) of the state contribute to deaths, which include 120 lung cancer deaths, 1,421 heart attacks and approximately 24,000 asthma attacks each year (catf.us).”

*by Bernard Tabatznik and Michael McCally.  Tabatznik is a clinical cardiologist in Monterey. McCally is the executive director for Physicians for Social Responsibility in Washington, D.C.

Mercury contamination is so widespread that one out of every six pregnant women have mercury levels in their blood high enough for levels in the fetus to reach or surpass the EPA’s safety threshold for mercury. … Smokestack emissions from coal-fired power plants are the primary source of mercury pollution …

We know coal is dangerous, polluting and adding to human and animal cancer.  We know it’s causing climate change.  We know it emits not just greenhouse gases, but also mercury, arsenic, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and other toxins in its ash waste.  Yet its use continues.  This is nothing short of outrageous. How many people die each year from the use of coal?  At least 24,000 just from the particulate matter.  Talk about shoving something down our throats — this is what they have done with coal for over 100 years, and we are dying from it.

There is still NO SUCH THING AS CLEAN COAL and there is no affordable way to make it clean enough to use it in the future, and still have it be cheap enough to use.  Cleaning something that dirty will be very expensive.

The era of coal is over. We know too much to continue to use it.  Let’s bury it once and for all.

Tell your senators and congress people — end the use of coal!

By S. T.

from Futurism Now  - http://www.civilianism.com/futurism/?p=4627

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