“Radiation in water” and Scientific Literacy In Reporting
March 4th, 2011
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Recently found this short article online. The subject matter relates to the potential for water contamination by natural gas exploration, which is a valid concern, although it is as much, or more, due to toxic heavy metals as naturally occurring or artificial radioisotopes.
Does EPA under-report radiation in drinking water?
KHOU-TV in Houston reports that the EPA has long minimized the levels of radiation in the nation’s drinking water and the danger it poses. Here’s what Dr. Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research told the station:“Where I think the EPA was wrong was in neglecting some natural radioactive materials altogether,” said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, a physicist and former advisor to the EPA on radiation science.
Makhijani, a physicist and an engineer who has a PhD from Berkeley, has testified before Congress, and has served as an expert witness in Nuclear Regulatory Commission proceedings. He now runs the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.
“I have told them that their drinking water notions are dating from science from 1959,” he said.
In this week’s paper, we wrote about the use of radioactive tracer isotopes in gas drilling, and the radioactive materials brought to the surface by the process of hydraulic fracturing, as well as the long history in this region of discharging radioactive waste into our waterways.
In related news, listen to what Walter Hang, of Ithaca’s Toxics Targeting, has to say to Democracy Now about the revelations in this week’s three-part New York Times series on the disposal of wastewater generated in hydraulic fracturing.
Intentionally avoiding getting side-tracked by the fallacy that old knowledge is inherently wrong and that notions of water safety from 1959 are thus wrong by virtue of age alone…
Reporters really should not report on things that they haven’t even the most fundamental understanding of, or if they must, they really should run their article by someone who does have an idea about the subject before actually publishing it. This is a perfect example, because you don’t even have to read past the headline to realize that the author is completely clueless. Although this kind of error is common, it’s impossible to have “radiation in drinking water.”
Radiation is energy. More specifically, it is energy that is radiating out from a source. Ionizing radiation comes in the form of either particles that are racing through space or electromagnetic influence in the form of gamma ray photons. Once the particles slow down and lose their kinetic energy, they cease to be radiation, and once the gamma photon is absorbed and results in ionization, it too no longer is radiation. Radiation cannot be “in drinking water,” because it’s not a substance. It would be like saying “light in drinking water.”
If water emits ionizing radiation it is not because there’s radiation in it but because there’s a radioactive substance in it.
Nitpicking? Perhaps, but this kind of thing irritates me to no end.
This entry was posted on Friday, March 4th, 2011 at 10:23 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Enviornment, Good Science, media. 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.
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March 4th, 2011 at 10:49 pm
Eh … they’re quoting Makhijani and IEER.
Credibility went out the window as soon as I saw those names.
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March 4th, 2011 at 10:52 pm
What are the regs on the lead content of drinking water?
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March 4th, 2011 at 11:16 pm
And then there is this item from the worst antinuke site on the web
Ionizing radiation being touted to children as safe?
from nuclear-news by Christina MacPherson
(What are “health physicists” anyway ? Doesn’t sound like they’re doctors) (Her italics)
Students learn about radiation Mar 05, 2011 RICHLAND, Wash.- Second graders at Christ the King School in Richland got a hands-on physics demonstration Friday.
Two health physicists taught the children about personal protective equipment, radiation detection, and examples of everyday items containing radiation.
Some of those everyday items include: bananas, some rocks, and even human beings.
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March 4th, 2011 at 11:51 pm
Oh that’s just great. They claim to be enough of an expert on nuclear energy to tell us why everything is wrong with it but don’t even know what a health physicist is.
By the way, this is the same website that responded about a comment they took down a while ago:
http://depletedcranium.com/a-rare-response-and-admission-to-a-removed-comment/
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March 5th, 2011 at 12:53 am
I don’t really have any thing to contribute, I just wanted to say I’ve been seeing more and more of these stories lately and they’re irritating the hell out of me. The fact that nuclear-news is making statements like this about radiation and they don’t know what a health physicist is? The level of ignorance is astounding. I wish the average person who happens to be ignorant of radiation and basic nuclear physics could see the blind ideology pushing these moronic groups. OK… I think I’m done, sorry for the rant.
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March 5th, 2011 at 1:25 am
Morning
Yes, this also gets on my nerves. The media have a real problem with ‘radiation’ and ‘radioactivity’. They also get mixed up between the ‘emissions’, and the substances from which the emissions are emanating from – which you have already noted above. In the recent story regarding a ‘nuclear incident’ in South Korea there were Media reports based on ‘radiation leak’, ‘radioactivity leak’, ‘loss of radiation’. If you consider the last one ‘loss of radiation’, and assume we are talking photons (i.e. gamma ray photons), then how do you explain the ‘loss of light photons’ after turning a torch on? Did they come out and float away over a wall …
Furthermore, some of the stories regarding drinking water, which you note are being used by the media, attract interest when the radiation word is used. As you rightly point out, heavy metal contamination could be a legitimate concern. Without off tracking too much here – it might be possible that the use of DU weapons in the battle field might lead to undesirable health effects. However, if this is the case it will be the heavy metal toxic properties and not the ionising radiation effects. If that is the case, then I am sure there are far more worrying toxic substance worries in a battle field setting than DU (oils, spend munitions, fumes, smoke, etc).
However, that is not so interesting – radiation will sell a story.
Finally, and as always without any intention to spam this article, take a look at this small animation (no audio). It was a simple attempt to show the difference between ‘radiation’ and ‘contamination’ (in this case radioactive contamination). The media should look at this before writing their stories perhaps?
http://tinyurl.com/665up97
Mark
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March 5th, 2011 at 3:28 am
Arjun Makhijani is yet another former fusion academic who seems to loathe humanity- what is it with these guys?
What bothers me more than an apparent lack of scientific background, is the lack of interest in the background of the people who are always getting in front of congress or giving lines for an article quote. Ed Lyman must take at least 10 of these types of calls per day for someone needing a quote. Where are the other health physicists who need to come out and call Makhijani on his misinformation and paranoia? Yes, bad journalism like this is irritating but the fact that it’s the same group of anti-nukes that field the calls and get the quotes everytime – that’s even more irritating.
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March 5th, 2011 at 6:01 am
Bryan Elliott said:
10 ppb I do believe…
Uranium is 50 to 30 ppb (Canada and US respectively) though I have heard they are changing it.
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March 5th, 2011 at 3:17 pm
Arjun Makhijani, Ed Lyman, et. al. get asked for quotes to provide “balance” for stories by reporters who aren’t specialists in the area they are reporting in. We live in a world where there are thousands, of sports reporters, fashion correspondents, journalists who do nothing but go on international assignments to follow the latest conflict, or never venture far from the Supreme Court like Nina Totenburg. There are even a fair number of science journalists who know a good deal about what they are reporting on. But the number of mass market reporters who really understand energy policy and environmental regulation are few (Matthew Wald at NYT being the only one who comes to mind). To be somewhat gentle on them, if you asked me to report in a specialized area like music or the arts, I would be exposed as a complete idiot pretty quickly too.
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March 5th, 2011 at 4:43 pm
The Trouble with Radioactive Water:Grist delves into the responses and repercussions of a recent New York Times story about contaminated water in Pittsburgh
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March 5th, 2011 at 8:18 pm
““radiation in drinking water”
What if you drank reactor coolant just after it came out of the reactor, and it was still giving off N-16 gamma? Wouldn’t that be radiation in your drinking water? But you would probably burn your tongue…
When I was in college I knew a girl who graduated with a B.A. in Journalism who couldn’t do mixed fractions.
Hey, I notice there are no comments yet on that nuclear-news site – what are you people waiting for?
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March 5th, 2011 at 8:55 pm
AtomikRabbit said:
No that would be a radioactive substance in the drinking water, not radiation in the water.
DV82XL said:
I have not seen any solid evidence that natural gas fracking causes any kind of dangerous levels of radio-nucleotides in drinking water. I don’t think this is an area worth being concerned about. I do however, know that the concentrated slurry that comes out can be radioactive enough to cause some level of concern and that the process may release a number of toxic like lead, mercury, arsenic and so on.
Still talking about radiation in drinking water is going to get a lot of media attention and turn people against some of these gas projects. Radioactivity scares people and grabs headlines.
I’ve gotten very frustrated with the gas industry and the fact that they seem to get a free pass on so many things and are touted as “sustainable” and “green.”
It’s almost tempting to get on the bandwagon of radiation fears to leverage it against big gas. However, I won’t do that. I can’t start using scientifically dubious claims even to advance scientifically valid end goals.
On a related note, there’s a documentary “Gasland.” When I first saw it I thought that it would be great as a way to support the argument that natural gas is not so benign. However, when I started seeing the actual film, I noted that much of it was true, but much of it was either exaggerated or just plain false. Thus, I won’t endorse it in any way.
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March 5th, 2011 at 9:14 pm
AtomikRabbit said:
Actually I did post a comment (a nice and polite one too!) but it was only visible for a short while. I guess they’re offended by links that describe what a health physicist is… Strange, it wasn’t like it was a nuclear power website. Hypocrites.
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March 6th, 2011 at 1:22 am
Will said:
See previous interaction with said website
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March 6th, 2011 at 3:27 am
@ drbuzz0
Interesting, I’m surprised they admitted something like that. I went back and found there are now quite a few comments, however mine is still missing. Apparently they must not approve of links to sites which they do not control or think are possibly under the pay of “Big Nuke”. All is fair when you don’t play fair… or whatever their motto is.
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March 6th, 2011 at 6:09 am
I am surprised, my comment is still up AND I have been thanked for the information…be interesting to see how long that will last.
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March 6th, 2011 at 9:32 pm
Mine are still up, but darn, I haven’t been thanked! I think she likes Matte better…
Thanks for the heads up on the Nuke-News site – I think I may check in more often.
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March 6th, 2011 at 9:42 pm
AtomikRabbit said:
Keep an emesis basin handy, and avoid that site if you have blood pressure issues.
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March 6th, 2011 at 10:00 pm
DV82XL said:
This should cheer you up.
There’s an absolutely delicious article just put up on Climate Spectator by Italian ‘renewables’ snake oil salesman Carlo Ombello, mourning the immanent demise of the Italian solar industry:
http://www.climatespectator.com.au/commentary/killer-decree-threatens-global-solar#comment-5841
Some may may recall Ombello’s prior boasts about how much the cost of solar power was coming down so quickly, and how nuclear power had absolutely no future because it was much too expensive, or something.
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March 7th, 2011 at 9:47 pm
[...] to beat a dead horse, but my last post lamenting how reporters are so completely lacking of science literacy as to say tha… has now been [...]
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