[ RadSafe ] Uranium and genotoxicity

[Dan W McCarn]

Dan W. McCarn, Geologist; 3118 Pebble Lake Drive; Sugar Land, TX 77479; USA 
HotGreenChile at gmail.com    mccarn at unileoben.ac.at    UConcentrate at gmail.com

Hi all:

James is persistent; I just wish that he would listen. My presentation of moles per liter of PHREEQC equilibrium concentrations has been previously presented. Remember autunite and schoepite have an equilibrium  solubility of 10^-2.5 to 10^-3.5 moles per liter total U with quite good kinetics compared to coffinite and uraninite with 10^-8 to 10^-12 mole per liter.  Given the pH range and bicarbonate concentration, virtually all of the oxidized uranium would be in the aqueous anionic species UO2(CO3)2 -2 (aq).

Having modeled uranium redistribution in the San Luis Valley from regional redox-controlled roll-fronts (McCarn, 2004), I noticed that the annual estimated source term contribution from groundwater is about 7.5 Tonnes U - The same that I "estimated" for the single year in Iraq for airborne release (I could be wrong about that, but I think most of the DU will remain in the battlefield area). Ground water redistribution from battlefield areas would required decades to hundreds / thousands of years or more for re-distribution, and may in fact, "hang" in aquifers if reducing conditions are encountered indefinitely.

The major difference is that ALL of the groundwater in the San Luis Valley was directed at growing crops with roughly 1 million acre-feet per year (1.3 x 10^12 L) of consumptive water use. With typical concentrations in many localities of 5-10 ug/L ranging upwards to 100s of ug/L.  To place this in perspective, since the history of the basin goes back to the 1880s for the artesian GW use, and was fully developed by 1910, that means that 100 years of annual uranium contributions on the same scale as the single event in Iraq has been continuously occurring.  This valley happens to have an annual estimated release of 2-3 kCi of 222Rn per year (kilocuries).

Run the mass balance as a reality check.

Ditto for the Central Valley in California except on a grander scale.  And likely for other, numerous GW irrigation / redox front targets in the great divide basin.

In these valleys, aquifers in proximity to regional or local redox fronts would tend to first concentrate uranium for significant time periods (millennia up to millions of years) only to have the source-term stripped via anthropogenic irrigation well intercepts of the redox zone for irrigation by forcing oxidized waters to flow across the redox front, if the well is located within the interfingering zone of oxidation-reduction conditions.

Also consider that groundwater may also have a number of other trace metals and materials, e.g. major anions & cations (Na, Ca, Cl, SO4, HCO3, CO3) trace metals (selenium, molybdenum, etc. that may concentrate in the soil zone over time.  It all depends on the "Leaching Coefficient", how quickly or slowly specific analytes move through the soil column. Thus "sodium hazard", caliches, evapotranspiration / water balance and other soil problems when materials concentrate.

The fact is that the uranium does not concentrate significantly in desert soils with the possible exception of caliche- or gypcretes-forming soils), and moves through the root zone fairly rapidly, if my Kazakh data of continuous soil contamination from broken U-exploration free-flowing artesian well heads is any reference.

My opinion only!

Dan ii



-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] On Behalf Of James Salsman
Sent: Friday, June 06, 2008 10:03 PM
To: Brent Rogers; radsafelist
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] Uranium and genotoxicity

Brent,

If you've been reading along the multiple agreeing peer-reviewed
sources, you have evidence that uranyl is a genotoxic teratogen in
multiple rodents.

Do you have any evidence that it is not in moles?

James Salsman

On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 7:41 PM, Brent Rogers
<brent.rogers at optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> James
>
> Regarding moles, do you have any evidence that uranium in the soil has any
> effect whatsoever on a mole's survivability?  Considering everything those
> creatures have to live with, primarily their place in the food chain, I
> surmise that U in the soil they live in is a vanishingly small factor.
>
> But of course, I can't prove this, so following on from how you've argued
> every other point, it must mean that moles are dying from U exposure left
> and right.  However, I haven't seen anything in the scientific literature
> that reports a high level of birth defects among their population.
>
> Brent Rogers
> Sydney Australia
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl [mailto:radsafe-bounces at radlab.nl] On Behalf
> Of James Salsman
> Sent: Saturday, 7 June 2008 11:31 AM
> To: bcradsafers at hotmail.com; radsafelist
> Subject: [ RadSafe ] Uranium and genotoxicity
>
> Dear Dr. Cedervall,
>
> Your point is not valid. The fact remains that increasing exposure to
> uranyl cause an increase in birth defects.  Do you deny that?
>
> Do you wish humans to have the same survivability as moles?
>
> Is your understanding of DNA biology and teratology what passes for
> normal in the Swedish health physics community?
>
> James Salsman
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