Radiation in Water Reported by the Environmental Working Group

The nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) evaluated data from a five-year study that ended in 2015 and found radium in water in all 50 US states.

The state with the most widespread contamination, according to EWG, is Texas, where more than 3,500 utilities serving more than 22 million people — about 80 percent of the state’s population– reported finding radium.

“Radium and radon are potent human carcinogens. Radium, via oral exposure, is known to cause lung, bone, head (mastoid air cells), and nasal passage tumors. Radon, via inhalation exposure, causes lung cancer,”  according to an EPA fact sheet.

Radium is a contaminant with a relatively high EPA limit.  California’s limit is much lower, and a large number of US water systems which pass US standards would exceed California’s.   According the EWG: “Almost all exceeded California state scientists’ public health goals for two separate radium isotopes, set in 2006, which are hundreds of times more stringent than the EPA’s standard for the two isotopes combined. The elevated risk of cancer, as well as potential harm to fetal growth and brain development, decreases with lower doses of radiation but does not go away.”

Main Source:  Water Online