Radium in Maryland well water

["Thomas E. Potter" <pottert@erols.com>]

Exerpts from an article in the 7/20/00 Washington Post Metro section. 
See following web page for entire article (available for next 14 days)
and link to map

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9839-2000Jul19.html

Radium Found In Hundreds of Arundel [Anne Arundel County, Maryland]
Wells 

By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday , July 20, 2000 ; B01 

Exerpts below:

Extensive testing for radium in Anne Arundel County well water has found
contamination in hundreds of homes clustered in a
relatively small pocket just north of Annapolis, where subdivisions line
the banks of the Severn and Magothy rivers.

Overall, 63 percent of the 1,300 wells examined by the county to date
had elevated levels of the cancer-causing substance, and
a substantial number had radium levels that experts consider alarmingly
high, according to county findings reviewed by The
Washington Post.

Radium, a naturally occurring metal that dissolves in water and is more
than a million times more radioactive than uranium, was
discovered in Anne Arundel County's water in 1996, when scientists
stumbled on it during a search to explain the county's high
cancer rates.

Prolonged exposure to the radioactive substance--which bears no relation
to the commonly known, airborne carcinogen
radon--can cause bone cancer. But officials have discounted any public
health threat, saying people would have to drink two
liters of radium-contaminated water each day for decades before the risk
of the disease would increase even slightly. Home
water filtration systems that use the ion exchange or reverse osmosis
methods have been successful in reducing contamination in
most cases.

Officials do not believe pollution is to blame for radium, which forms
naturally in acidic water that is rich in sodium and chloride.

Traces of radium also have been found in private wells in Prince
George's, Harford and Baltimore counties. But a map
compiled by The Washington Post shows some wells in Crownsville,
Pasadena and Millersville yielded radium levels
approaching 593 picocuries per liter. The maximum safe level is 15
picocuries per liter, according to the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency.
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