Blimey, this is pretty weak beer:
Yet sewage treatment plant operators say they are far less capable of removing radioactive contaminants than most other toxic substances. Indeed, most of these facilities cannot remove enough of the radioactive material to meet federal drinking-water standards before discharging the wastewater into rivers, sometimes just miles upstream from drinking-water intake plants.
Which is, of course, why we have drinking water treatment plants: because we don’t expect the rivers, aquifers, nor even the run off from sewage plants, to meet drinking water standards.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Bill Sticker // Feb 27, 2011 at 2:38 pm
I blame the increased consumption of Bananas.
2 Neil Craig // Feb 27, 2011 at 5:17 pm
Its not that radioactive materials are any more difficult to remove than anything else but that the standard of purity we require is orders of magnitude higher. In fact, as Bill points out, natural radioactivity is often far higher than “official” safe limits. For example parts of south India have natural radiation 17 times the oficial safe limit without any damage. Coal, power styations are also allowed to release far more radioactivity than nuclear ones, coal containing some radioactive particles. The theory that radiation is dangerous at anything above zero is, while official, bureaucratic raving. The evidence is overwhelming that, at low levels it actually improves health.
http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2010/03/low-level-radiation-evidence-that-it-is.html
3 dearieme // Feb 27, 2011 at 8:15 pm
I gave up the article after the first page; the author seemed confused as to whether drinking water standards should apply to wastewater or just to drinking water.
4 Mark Wadsworth // Feb 27, 2011 at 9:02 pm
“detroying” is presumably a bit like “dehelening”?
5 blokeinfrance // Feb 27, 2011 at 9:58 pm
Sewage plants treat shit. Once you start mixing chemicals from fracking there’s a risk they will treat neither shit nor chemicals. So yes, it’s a concern. And yes, the polluter should pay, not the taxpayer. That said, I’m pretty gung ho about shale gas, once they can make it cheaper to extract by getting rid of all the expensive crap (including diesel!) they currently use to free the gas.
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