EPA approves road construction project in Florida that will use radioactive byproduct

[wizardB]

Let me Google that for you?
"Florida contains roughly 5 – 10 picocuries per gram (pCi/g) of radium while phosphogypsum from Central Florida contains about 20 – 35 pCi/g radium. "

"1 pCi of radium per gram of soil is likely to result in harmful health effects."

"What recommendations has the federal government made to protect human health?
The EPA has set a drinking water limit of 5 picocuries per liter (5 pCi/L) for radium-226 and radium-228 (combined). The EPA has set a soil concentration limit for radium-226 in uranium and thorium mill tailings of 5 picocuries per gram in the first 15 centimeters of soil and 15 picocuries per gram in deeper soil.
The federal recommendations have been updated as of July 1999."

Source: https://wwwn.cdc.gov/TSP/PHS/PHS.aspx?phsid=789&toxid=154

You know they're going to build it before they test it. That's the Conservative way. So do you really even have a choice in the matter?

Given that Democrats are still in power your comment makes absolutely no sense and sounds like someone with only a small grasp of reality.

 

[Megalomaniac]

Somewhere in 2050, when cancer clusters pop up, they'll point back to this article.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Have we REALLY not learned out lesson on Radium? Did the Radium Girls' lesson really not stick?

Stick this stuff in the same place you put other radioactive waste. If rainfall can create a toxic runoff, this stuff does NOT belong in a roadway.

They are literally building it to test it. It's a 500 foot section on private land next to control 500 foot sections.

Maybe read the article before assuming you get to call out your political strawman.

Do you also need to lick a hot stovetop to confirm that it will burn you, Or can we learn from past experiences? Or a control experiment to confirm that sticking a piece of cobaly-60 up your bum is a bad idea?

Airborne radium isn't anyone idea of a good time, nor is radium leaking into the water supply. But I guess we need an entire county full of Eben Byers having their jaws fall off and their bones shattering to figure out why radium getting into the water supply is a REALLY ****ING BAD IDEA.

 

[Endymio]

Stick this stuff in the same place you put other radioactive waste. If rainfall can create a toxic runoff, this stuff does NOT belong in a roadway.... But I guess we need an entire county full of Eben Byers having their jaws fall off and their bones shattering to figure out why radium getting into the water supply is a REALLY ****ING BAD IDEA.

Brazil nuts are full of radium, as are many bottled mineral waters. Should we put all those in a radioactive waste dump? Seawater has trillions of tons of radium -- should we rope off the world's oceans?

Essentially everything is radioactive to a degree. What's particularly ironic is that ignorance like that displayed in the above post was responsible for stalling the nuclear power industry and thereby keeping open countless coal-fired power plants -- plants that release 1000X the radiation that nuclear plants do, and release it directly into the air we breathe .... all from the radioactive isotopes found naturally in coal.

 

[Xelions]

They should pave all the roads around Mar-A-Lago with this stuff.

So thats how he gets his tan without beaches.

 

[captaincranky]

Now, now, let's not confuse the leftists with actual science...they never got beyond Scientology.

Neither did Tom Cruise, but he seems to be doing OK.