[ RadSafe ] Houston TV Report that Texas drinking water makes pipesand plumbing radioactive

[franz.schoenhofer at chello.at]

Roger,

I admit that I have not read all of the citations that were forwarded in your mail.  But to make it clear: We have here an excellent example, of how correct facts are twisted so long and so far, that they fit in individuals or groups agenda. 

First of all: It is known since decades, that pipes accumulate under certain circumstances scales, which naturally contain elevated concentrations of radium (and other elements). This is best known from oil platforms, but has been known since long to occur also in drinking water pipes. Bill Field, who has been once on RADSAFE and whom I am happy to have met personally long time ago in New York at an ACS meeting, has described this in several papers. My friend Stanislaw Chalupnik and coworkers from the Central Mining Institute in Katowice, Poland, where I have happily worked for many months per year during several of the past years, has done extensive resarch on the conditions for forming radium bearing scales and removal of radium isotopes from waters from coal mines. (I have been able to see that in a Silesian coal mine myself!) 

Secondly: The problem of radium scales in oil platform pipes is more than well known. The "problem" of radium scales in drinking water pipes is very well know as well among scientists. Why do I write "problems" under inverted commas? In fact it is an almost ideal system to remove the radium from drinking water and to reduce radiation burden from the public. 

Thirdly: When the drinking water pipes in an Austrian supply system had to be exchanged they were found by the smelting company
to be "radioactive". So this is nothing new. Please don't ask me about the outcome, because I was not anymore responsible for such events, so I did not receive any information.

Fourthly: I could not detect any dose or concentration value. 

Lessons to learn, except that any picoSieverts are deadly: Let me return later to this topic.

Franz