[ RadSafe ] NIRS says EPA PROPOSES SHOCKING THOUSAND-FOLD INCREASE IN RADIOACTIVITY ALLOWED IN DRINKING WATER

[Roger Helbig]

Just to make you aware of this drive to stop EPA change

Roger Helbig

---------- Forwarded message ----------
EPA PROPOSES SHOCKING THOUSAND-FOLD INCREASE IN RADIOACTIVITY ALLOWED
IN DRINKING WATER

by Christina MacPherson

>From Diane D'Arrigo at NIRS (Nuclear Information and Resource Service)
Note that the public has 45 days from when it is published in the
Federal Register to comment to the EPA on the PAG-Protective Action
Guides. I'll post an alert tomorrow. This is a media release below.
Feel free to send it to interested reporters. Direct them to the press
contacts listed at the top of the release. Thanks! - Kay C.





Proposal Would Permit Radiation Exposures Equivalent to 250 Chest X-Rays a Year

Washington, D.C. – Yesterday, the U.S. EPA quietly issued proposals to
allow radioactive contamination in drinking water at concentrations
vastly greater than allowed under the Safe Drinking Water Act. The new
guidance would permit radiation exposures equivalent to 250 chest
X-rays a year. Today, environmental groups called the proposal
“shocking” and “egregious.”

The EPA proposed Protective Action Guides (PAGs) would allow the
general population to drink water hundreds to thousands of times more
radioactive than is now legal. For example, radioactive iodine-131 has
a current limit of 3 pico-curies per liter (pCi/L), in water but the
new guidance would allow 10,350 (pCi/L), 3,450 times higher. For
strontium-90, which causes leukemia, the current limit is 8 pCi/L; the
new proposed value is 7,400 pCi/L, a 925-fold increase.

“Clean Water is essential for health. Just like lead, radiation when
ingested in small amounts is very hazardous to our health. It is
inconceivable that EPA could now quietly propose allowing enormous
increases in radioactive contamination with no action to protect the
public, even if concentrations are a thousand times higher than under
the Safe Drinking Water Act,” said Dr. Catherine Thomasson, Executive
Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility.

The Bush Administration in its last days unsuccessfully tried to put
forward similar proposals, which the incoming Obama Administration
pulled back. Now, in the waning months of the Obama Administration,
EPA’s radiation office is trying again.

“These levels are even higher than those proposed by the Bush
Administration—really unprecedented and shocking,” said Diane
D’Arrigo, Nuclear Information and Resource Service. Read more of this
post

http://nuclear-news.net/2016/06/08/epa-proposes-shocking-thousand-fold-increase-in-radioactivity-allowed-in-drinking-water/