I guess the kids in the next town from me should be all dead soon…
November 15th, 2008
|
| Share |
I happen to live about two miles from Madison CT.
Uranium found in Madison water
MADISON — District officials will disable all water fountains at two schools and supply bottled water for drinking and cooking purposes after the schools’ water tested positive for elevated uranium levels.
Superintendent of Schools David Klein advised parents Friday that uranium, a mildly radioactive substance that can cause kidney disease, was found Thursday in water at both Kathleen H. Ryerson Elementary School and Dr. Robert H. Brown Middle School.
The uranium level was found to be 110 parts per billion, more than three times the standard accepted by the federal Environmental Protection Agency for public water systems that supply homes, Klein said.
There is no standard for schools, and no testing is required for schools, said Brian Toal, an epidemiologist at the state Department of Public Health.
The tests were done after an anonymous source told school officials Oct. 28 that elevated uranium levels were found in the groundwater at a nearby property.
The Department of Public Health does not expect people who consumed the water to suffer any adverse health effects, Toal said Friday.
As a precaution, town employees will disconnect all water fountains this weekend and begin using water coolers in the halls and kitchens beginning Monday and until further notice, Klein said.
“I think the school district is responding very thoughtfully. We’ve responded expeditiously, and I think we’ve put together a plan, starting Monday, that is all about the safety of the occupants of the schools,” he said.
For the first week, the coolers will cost the school district about $555, Director of Facilities Bill McMinn said. He said he will determine future orders based on consumption.
No other Madison schools were affected because their water is provided by the Connecticut Water Company, which tests for uranium and other impurities, Klein and Department of Public Health Director John Bowers said.
Toal said students and staff exposed to the uranium need not take any action.
He said he has seen levels in Connecticut of more than 1,000 parts per billion not cause adverse effects.
“We just don’t want people, parents, to be overly concerned. If their children were drinking a reasonable amount of water, … we would not expect any adverse effects and there’s no medical testing that would be recommended or even be useful,” Toal said.
Usually, in situations when there are elevated uranium levels, building owners drill a new well or install a filtration device, Toal said.
“We will be continuing to talk to the state Health Department about any further action that we can take,” Bowers said. “Treatment is going to be very difficult.”
Klein said he has not determined the probable cost of supplying water to the schools, and remedying the uranium levels, or where the money would come from in the budget.
“We just wanted to make sure we did the responsible thing and we will find the money to do the right thing,” Klein said.
Several parents Friday said that although they were somewhat concerned about the uranium levels, they were confident in the administration’s ability to handle the problem.
Maggie Mayer, a parent of students at both schools, said that while she found the news startling, she trusted that the situation would be handled and would not result in any health problems for her children.
“I think what did concern me is the possibility that they haven’t been testing the water all along,” Mayer said, adding that she wished school officials had taken action when the tip came in Oct. 28. “I understand that they probably didn’t even think that this was a concern, but that’s two more weeks of exposure that the kids didn’t need to have.”
A meeting, where residents can ask questions and discuss concerns, is scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday in the Brown Middle School auditorium.
It was mentioned on the news that the “source of the uranium has not yet been determined.” Well, I can tell you what the source is right now: the local geology. Yes, that’s right. Uranium, as far as minerals go, is just not rare at all. It’s actually quite common to find uranium in a variety of rock and soil types.
The fact that the levels are “three times higher” than the federal standard for residential drinking water shouldn’t really be any reason for concern. The standards are set very conservatively and considering that most kids would be limited to a few sips from a drinking fountain, the exposure is basically neglidgable. 110 ppb is a bit higher than normal but still not really high enough to really get worried about.
Another thing to consider is that many of the students from this school likely go home to drink from wells that have just as much uranium in the water, if not more. All things considered, bringing in bottled water seems a bit silly and expensive. However, I can’t fault the school for feeling the need to. I’m sure that if they did not immediately shut off the “uranium” water fountains there would be plenty of parents screaming bloody murder about it.
Of course, if you go by the word of those who believe that Iraq, Afgahnistan and Bosnia are all contaminated forever and full of victums of depleted uranium, then shouldn’t all the students be dead by now? Or at least have some kind of hideous tumor growing on their head or something? Guess not.
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 15th, 2008 at 11:40 am and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Depleted Cranium, Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
View blog reactions
November 15th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
The average total daily uranium intake by a 70-kg adult in North America is estimated to be 2.6 μg, or 0.04μg/kg food accounting for 77% (2.0 μg), drinking water makes up most of the remainder. (Source: Canadian Medical Association). So with over three-quarters coming from food, I would have to assume that water is a minor source.
I also note that the highest considerations of hexavalent uranium found in drinking water are from samples taken from private wells, which all but precludes the notion that this material is present due to human activity.
Quote Comment
November 15th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Doc,
You neglected to mention that fact that CT is basically sitting on a granite slab and that almost all houses have Radon fans like my cellar does, because of Uranium decay. Yet I have have never heard that Ct has an abnormal cancer rate. Other than from the doomcryers and frauds that is. I just loved it when I lived on Meadow St in Guilford, right across the street from what Court TV called the Substation Of Doom with scary lawsuit cancer program to match. I guess that the local scare industry is still alive and well.
Quote Comment
November 15th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
I’m not disputing that this is probably harmless but I’m a little skeptical of your point that uranium is common because if it was then they are there uranium prospectors and government awards for discovering uranium strikes?
Quote Comment
November 15th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Richard K said:
Uranium is common in the Earth’s crust, but high grade uranium ore is not necessarily that common. You can go almost anywhere in the world and find uranium-bearing rocks if you look around with a geiger counter. However, if you have ten kilograms of uranium in an area, but it’s dispersed within several hundred tons of rock, then it doesn’t help you with reasonable recovery. And that’s the problem: Although relatively common, it’s usually very dilute.
To mine uranium economically you need uranium ore, that is, minerals that have a high concentration of uranium, formed by geological processes that deposit it into veins and concentrated deposits. These are not as common, but they’re certainly not as rare as some minerals like gold or silver. High grade ore deposits, where there are minerals with high uranium content – often in the form of veins of uranium oxides right through the rock exist in a number of places, however. The richest deposits are in Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, Central Africa.
There are a few of these deposits in the US and other locations around the world, but they’re relatively small, few and far between. Some of the smaller high grade clusters have been exhausted.
There are also deposits in that are less rich but still can be mined relatively economically. In the United States there are some descent deposits out in Colorado and Utah and a few other places. These are normally in the form of uranium-bearing sandstone. They’re concentrated and avaliable enough to be minable, but they don’t match the quality and concentration of the ore found in Canada – or for that matter Africa, which has some of the most concentrated ore deposits ever found.
These deposits used to be mined heavily during the Cold War as government subsidies kept them going. It was seen a stratigic resource that they wanted to keep alive domestically. Today, there’s some mining in the US, but it’s limited. Even though the uranium can be recovered it’s usually cheaper to buy it from Canada or Australia where it’s much cheaper to mine it conventionally.
large, but very low grade deposits of uranium have been shown to be recoverable using a leaching process, but currently that’s not able to compete with the rich high grade ore from Canada, Australia and Kazakhstan.
So uranium is everywhere. It’s just a matter of recovery
Quote Comment
November 15th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
I wonder if this would have even made the news if it had been that the water tested slightly above the standards set for something like thallium. How many people have heard of thallium? It’s more toxic than uranium but everyone has heard of uranium and as soon as they hear the word they think ‘OMG RADIOACTIVE’
Quote Comment
November 15th, 2008 at 5:00 pm
Richard K said:
I don’t think there are any government awards for discovering uranium deposits. Uranium is a lot cheaper than oil or natural gas, and governments that take special taxes on oil and natural gas tend to look for ways of discouraging their substitution with uranium.
Quote Comment
November 15th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
G.R.L. Cowan, H2 energy fan ’til ~1996 said:
They don’t now. The US did though, in the 1940’s and into the 1950’s. I’m not sure when it stopped, but there was a time when they gave cash for prospectors who found uranium deposits of a certain size. They haven’t for a long time, but it caused something of a small “uranium rush” in the 1950’s with people going out trying to strike it rich.
Quote Comment
November 15th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
I do not think that it is possible that we will run out of uranium because there is so much of it and it is so high in energy. What can happen, however, is that it will start to deplete most of the easiest to get to and closest to the surface deposits of high grade uranium. Then we do not run out but we have to resort to getting it from low grade sources and maybe in centuries even from seawater. Then the problem is not that we can’t get it but that it’s no longer economical to use only <1% of it. As it stands now we can throw out 99% of it as byproduct and not worry about it. If it gets a bit more expensive, we still can, but if it gets to be much much more expensive then we need to make each kilogram give the full energy it has instead of a small portion. That’s all that will change.
Also, isn’t thorium even more plentiful? If you look at it that way, we have nothing to worry about as it stands. I thought for a while uranium would eventually run out but as you look at the numbers you see its actually not possible to do so.
I read once that the energy minister of France said that if they suddenly were cut off from the world and they could not import any uranium that they have calculated that their own uranium resources are enough that they would not need to worry about it for thirty years and that’s even just using the current generation of reactors. If you think about it, France is actually a pretty small country and they are not blessed with very good uranium resources. If they could last thirty years before they even need to consider going to the fast reactors, then how long could Canada last? I would think many centuries.
I guess the downside is that they also said that if they had to do that (in France) that it would cost four or five times as much for the fuel than buying it overseas.
Quote Comment
November 15th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
Breeder reactors make the whole question of fuel availability for nuclear power a non-issue. Using breeding we will have enough fuel to last us for as long as we are on this planet.
Quote Comment
November 16th, 2008 at 1:38 am
Just out of curiosity, drbuzz0, is there any human activity, such as uranium mining or nuclear fuel cycle activities of any kind in that area that anti-nuclear types could seize on as an anthropogenic explanation for the uranium?
If not, then obviously there can be be no debate at all as to the natural origin of the uranium in the groundwater. I wonder if all the people have been drinking water with that uranium concentration for decades and never realising it? I wonder if there are any noticable health physics consequences of any kind – or lack of consequences – from that natural level of uranium exposure?
Quote Comment
November 16th, 2008 at 4:36 am
Luke Weston said:
As J. Carlton said, all of Connecticut sits on granite and is known for having radon, but as far as human uranium activities, no not really. There’s a nuclear power plant about 20-30 miles away or so. There’s a group which is fanatically trying to shut it down (and by group, I mean one crazy lady plus occasional support from local green-types). The plant is certainly not the source. They don’t do any kind of fabrication or anything. There’s a major nuclear submarine base and the Electric Boat Company which builds them 40 miles away.
There was a facility that fabricated fuel for nuclear submarines about 15-20 miles away, but that closed way way back in the early 1960’s. I don’t actually even know if it ever did fabricate any fuel rods or if it lost the contract before it even got to work on the actual fuel. That would be the only place I am aware of that has ever done any kind of uranium work in the state. There may be others that have had some use of uranium. United Technologies, General Dynamics Electric Boat Company, Sikorsky Aircraft are all likely to have handled depleted uranium at one time or another.
But this doesn’t really matter. None are remotely close to Madison CT. Madison has no industry to speak of – it’s a yuppy little bedroom community with some old buildings and a lot of snooty people.
This is undoubtedly natural
Luke Weston said:
I would very much doubt it. If there are any health effects at all, I’d suspect they’d be so small as to not stand out from the statistical noise
The levels in the drinking water at the school tested higher than standards for public water, but the standards are very conservative and they normally don’t apply to well water. Also, minerals disolved in well water can vary depending on if there’s a drought and the water levels run low or what season it is. So it’s possible a well might test low and then later it will turn out to be higher.
I have no doubt that there are innumerable people who drink, shower, wash their clothes in water with far more uranium in it than at this school. 110 ppb is a bit higher than normal, but it’s not freakishly high or anything.
Quote Comment