Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into
normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These
incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come
and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. Even though there are many more
which I can’t include. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there
were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone.
These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
TomCat has written more than once about exploding oil trains, and I think I have
posted a site through which one can determine just how close one lives to the rails on which these trains move. Through it, I learned that my home is indeed in the ‘blast zone,” so that if a train were to explode just by my street, I would be toast, literally.
But, as the EPA prepares to further destroy our air, our water, our land, our oceans, and all living things contained therein, this risk begins to shrink to a relatively minor consideration. To take me out, an oil train would have to explode opposite my street, plus or minus about a mile either way, and I would have to be home at the time (that of course is fairly probable, but not certain.) But there is another risk which not too many people know about, partly because information on it given to the public was deliberately faked and knowingly used by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality under the leadership, at the time, of Kathleen Hartnett White. That issue the issue of radiation in public tap water. Ms. Hartnett White, incidentally, was recently nominated by Trump (the nomination has since been withdrawn) to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Radiation in drinking water affects not just people who live within certain small radii, but everyone who lives within a system where the water is radioactive. It doesn’t kill as fast or as certainly as being consumed in a puff of flame, but it does kill over time. And one doesn’t have to be “at home when it happens,” because it is happening constantly, and anyone who drinks water is subject to its effects.
AlterNet recently covered this story with material from Environmental Working Group, 
including links to their Tap Water Database (which contains information on pretty well every contaminant you can think of as well as some you have never heard of), and their interactive map, which just locates radium (which is the most common radioactive element found in water.) Either will also link you further to information on filters that work and how costly they are. You can limit your search based on the kind of filter you are interested in and based on the contaminant or contaminants you are concerned about.
I wouldn’t look up everyone’s water department for you, even if I had all your addresses, because I’m sure you wouldn’t want them published. So I’m showing, as I did for the blast zone, my own. But the map’s not that tough to use. Bigger dots serve more customers. Darker dots have more radium. If you can’t get the mouse to give you the right pointer, you can put your Zip code in instead of clicking.
Bear in mind that
[F]ederal drinking water standards are based on the cost and feasibility of removing contaminants, not scientific determinations of what is necessary to fully protect human health. And like many EPA tap water standards, the radium limits are based on decades-old research rather than the latest science.
EWG prefers the guidelines set by the California Office of Environmental Hazard Assessment to
the Federal guidelines. Although not legally enforceable, they are at least calculated based on actual cancer risks. California looks at two isotopes of radium separately, which the EPA does not. It looks to me, however, like the radium from my water utility is running somewhere between twenty and a hundred times what California recommends. I have a household reverse osmosis filter, though, and even though it comes in already filtered, I run it through the refrigerator filter anyway if I plan to drink it. Or cook with it.
I’m not going to point any finger at any states over this – all fifty states have water systems with radium. Alecto, Megaera, Tisiphone, and staff, you will have plenty to do. If you should get bored, however, you can always look at lead.
The Furies and I will be back.
Cross posted to Care2 HERE.
11 Responses to “Everyday Erinyes #112”
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Quite honestly I hadn’t even thought about this, as we get bottled water, and not thinking about bathing, or sprinkling the lawn either. Good information here, which I appreciate. My little town seems to be fine, with no radium, but I’ll put on here what I found about Austin, which is right up the road from me.
Radium average: 0.667 pCi/L
“EWG’s drinking water quality report shows results of tests conducted by the water utility and provided to the Environmental Working Group by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality , as well as information from the U.S. EPA Enforcement and Compliance History database (ECHO). For the latest quarter assessed by the EPA (July 2017 – September 2017), tap water provided by this water utility was in compliance with federal health-based drinking water standards.”
Thank you again, Joanne & Furies, for posting, to which I will definitely pass on.
A government that does not care about the health of its people – as in the voters – does not deserve to stay in power. Let’s make the 2018 elections like gymnastics – lots of flipping!
Or pancakes.
All things considered, Oregon has excellent quality water, but the Republican plan to pollute it is shameful.
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Good one, JD! ?
Very interesting and horrifying at the same time. I entered zip code 98111 (Seattle) and found that there are 6 contaminants that are over the safety threshold and all are cancer causing, but the water is still classified as overall safe.
Given the water debacle in Flint, Michigan, it would be interesting to know how Flint’s water stacks up.
This is also a human rights issue. The Human Right to Water and Sanitation (HRWS) was recognised as a human right by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on 28 July 2010. I wonder if Drumpf’s infrastructure plan will take this into account? . . . not bloody likely! Republicans and Drumpf don’t give a rat’s ass about such things that affect the plebeians. They likely drink bottled water.
We know that Flint’s water is heavily poisoned by lead. I’m pretty sure lead is not radioactive … my memory is going, but isn’t lead used to shield against radioactivity? (Not that that would hold good in water, even if so.) Flint Zip codes run from 48501 up to about 48532 with some omitted, and some reserved. I’d start with 48502 in the database, or on the map to look up radium specifically.
Radioactive elements in drinking water, I hadn’t thought about that for decades. Not since the debates on opening up new nuclear power stations in the Netherlands. Perhaps I should have, because even though we haven’t built any new ones, and are in the process of closing the remainder down with the exception of those that aren’t power stations as such but produce radioactive material for hospitals, other countries in Europe did built new ones.
We are the drainage outlet of Europe, with several of the largest rivers (Meuse and Rhine) ending on our coast, and the water of those rivers is used to cool down the radioactive material in the power stations built right beside them for that purpose. The same water is also used to provide most Dutch with (drinking) water. Our governments in the past have battled with France about the radiation pollution their nuclear power stations situated on the banks of the Meuse caused, but Tritium levels have been well below safety levels for years now. The Rhine, coming through Germany’s largest industrial area, has posed other pollution problems for a long time, but is so clean the salmon has returned in some spots. So cleaning up can be done when governments want to shield their populations from health disasters (mainly DNA damage and cancer from radioactive water) and force these commercial power stations and any other industry near rivers or polluting ground water to clean-up their act. And take all possible safety precautions to avoid spillage and even more catastrophic accidents, but whether that’s enough, will hopefully never be put the test again.
I expect it would be possible to do the same in the USA, but not under the current regime of greedy money grabbers who put their profit far above people’s health. The EPA, or rather its paralysation by the GOP and Drump, is one problem the Furies have to contend with, the greed of all the industrialists responsible for contaminating America’s drinking water to this extend, is quite another.
In the map you liked to map, Joanne, I couldn’t get all spots open up to show the area and the radium levels found in water, especially the red ones show little compliance. When I finally got one of those red spots to open up, it said Bonne Terre, 7589 pCi/L. How ironic.
Ironic indeed. In fact, I LOLed (sardonically.) Yes, some of those dots were highly temperamental for me too, and using the Zip code will not help if one doesn’t know it. We have cleaned up messes before, and we could again, but we’d have to want to.
I’ve got 7 contaminants, though radium is not at a presumed dangerous level. the vast majority of water that we use comes from the refrigerator, as filtered, but I can not say just what the filter removes.
Well, you can try their filter buying guide. Set it to refrigerator filters, find the make you are using, and it will give you an idea. My RO filters well enough that adding the refrigerator one is kind of pro forma. I do it more because colder water tastes better to me than as a precaution. But I do figure it can’t hurt either.