From 2015, scare mongering with little content other than vague statements like<p>"Before treatment, Westport's water tested up to four times state and federal limits. After treatment, it's safe for the children, teachers and staff to drink."<p>This does not point to a specific limit such as Maxiumum Contanminant Level (MCL) or Maximum Contaminant Limit Goal (MCLG). MCLG is a non-legally binding limit, which is as it states is a goal. MCLG for urainum contaminants is 0 ug/L. Any measurement of any drinking water will always have more uranium than this limit. The MCL is 30ug/L for uranium.<p>Additionally, the EPA has changed the way in which they have approached limits, previously they quoted something like the World Health Organization limits [3], which are average daily consumption limits. Average implies that some measurements could be high or low. WHO estimates natural concentration of uranium in drinking water is 0.08 ug/L (0.001 Bq/L), which is obviously above the EPAs MCLG.<p>WHO is a much better resource for information on these limits, and the EPA appears to just take their limits and do a divide by ten.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_Contaminant_Level" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_Contaminant_Level</a>
[2] <a href="https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=30006644.txt" rel="nofollow">https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=30006644.txt</a>
[3] <a href="https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/272995/9789241513746-eng.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/272995/9789...</a>
Ah scare mongering. The safety limits are put in place such that the exposure causes no measurable effects, plus a buffer for safety. The precision of our instruments is very, very high.<p>Naturally occurring uranium has a very long half life. Which means it radiates very small amounts in comparison to other radioactive elements like certain isotopses of cesium and iodine. By many orders of magnitude.<p>You could drink 10x the "safe" levels of uranium your whole life and have no ill effects. Holding a kg rod of pure uranium gives you exposure between normal background and a plane flight.<p>The outrage you're looking for isn't here. It's not another Flint.
This has always been the case, at least in the Bakersfield area, unless a well actively filters these out. Our well water in the 90's would usually be 2-3x the EPA limits.
>> Other Central California farm schools opt to buy bottled water in place of drinking fountains, which are off limits because of uranium and other contaminants<p>Has anyone tested the bottled water? Most of it comes from domestic water supplies anyway. Since uranium doesn't have any impact on taste, I doubt the bottling companies are looking for it.<p>Also see: Recovery of uranium from seawater using amidoxime hollow fibers<p>"The fixed‐bed adsorption column, 30 cm in length and charged with the bundle of AO‐H fibers, was found to adsorb uranium from natural seawater at a sufficiently high rate: 0.66 mg uranium per g of adsorbent in 25 days."<p><a href="https://aiche.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/aic.690340308" rel="nofollow">https://aiche.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/aic.69...</a><p>That sort of tech could not just clean uranium from water, but at a commercial scale could produce very interesting amounts of uranium relatively quickly.
Galen Winsor, who worked on the Manhattan Project and at GE, eating uranium on camera<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqwYHmgB3Xc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqwYHmgB3Xc</a>
Well water was used to produce many crops throughout the California Central Valley during the recent long drought, vegetables and fruits that are then shipped for consumption throughout the States.