Radiation safety

Watch Out for a Possible Increase in Radioactivity in Your Drinking Water

With the appropriate concern aroused about levels of lead in drinking water in cities such as Flint, a new threat to health has been raised by a proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation. The proposed regulation would allow for a higher level of radioactivity in potable water. On June 8, EcoWatch detailed the alarming development:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)Monday to allow radioactive contamination in drinking water at concentrations vastly greater than allowed under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The new guidance would permit radiation exposures equivalent to 250 chest X-rays a year. Environmental groups are calling the proposal "shocking" and "egregious."

The EPA proposed Protective Action Guides (PAGs) would allow the general population to drink water hundreds to thousands of times more radioactive than is now legal. For example, radioactive iodine-131 has a current limit of 3 pico-curies per liter (pCi/L), in water but the new guidance would allow 10,350 (pCi/L), 3,450 times higher. For strontium-90, which causes leukemia, the current limit is 8 pCi/L; the new proposed value is 7,400 pCi/L, a 925-fold increase....

"These levels are even higher than those proposed by the Bush Administration—really unprecedented and shocking," Diane D’Arrigo, Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said.