Radioactive rainwater detected in Pennsylvania, CA, MA and Washington state…
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If you don’t want to read this, let me sum it up in a sentence. Radioactive Iodine-131 from Japan’s nuclear reactor meltdown has now reached the US rainwater in concentrations 3300% greater than allowed in drinking water but the government says its OK because no one drinks rainwater (except maybe your pets and plants, huh?).
By the way, radiation is accumulative. Radioactive iodine has a short half life (8 days), but there are other components arriving from this disaster that will stick around a lot longer.
So, in 16 days, the iodine-131 radiation in the rainwater will ONLY be 1650% about federal drinking water standards…unless of course it rains again.
Pennsylvania Office of the Governor
HARRISBURG, Pa., March 28, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Governor Tom Corbett today said weekend testing of public drinking water found no elevated levels of radioactivity.
On Friday, concentrations of Iodine-131, likely originating from the events at Japan’s damaged nuclear plants, were found in rainwater samples collected from Pennsylvania’s nuclear power plant facilities.
The numbers reported in the rainwater samples in Pennsylvania range from 40-100 picocuries per liter (pCi/L). Although these are levels above the background levels historically reported in these areas, they are still about 25 times below the level that would be of concern. The federal drinking water standard for Iodine-131 is three pCi/L.
“Rainwater is not typically directly consumed,” Corbett said. “However, people might get alarmed by making what would be an inappropriate connection from rainwater to drinking water. By testing the drinking water, we can assure people that the water is safe.”
While the radioactive element is believed to have originated from Japan’s damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, it is not considered to be a health risk in Pennsylvania or anywhere else in the country. Similar testing in other states, including California, Massachusetts and Washington, has shown comparable levels of Iodine-131 in rainwater samples.
Read full article with all the political doubletalk bullshit here (I just gave you just the cold hard facts):
http://www.centredaily.com/2011/03/28/v-print/2610598/governor-corbett-says-public-water.html
Related articles
- EPA finds radioactive iodine in rainwater in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts (alternet.org)
- Frequently Asked Questions about Iodine-131 Found in Surface Water (nlm.nih.gov)
- Radioactivity Found in US. (ramanan50.wordpress.com)
