Re: uranium in drinking water

["Franz Schoenhofer" <franz.schoenhofer@chello.at>]

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Bradshaw, Keith <Keith.Bradshaw@nnc.co.uk>
An: Multiple recipients of list <radsafe@romulus.ehs.uiuc.edu>
Datum: Montag, 09. Oktober 2000 19:42
Betreff: RE: uranium in drinking water


>
> By my calculation, they may be getting radiation doses by ingestion
>of around the 1mSv/year mark from uranium ingestion.  That's the limit for
>members of the public in Europe.

Sorry, this is not correct. The "indicative dose" for the public from
drinking water is 0.1 mSv/a in the European Union. (Europe comprises
countries like Switzerland, Norway, Slovenia, Hungary, Czech Republic,
Poland....., which are no EU memberstates.) This is according to the
Drinking Water Directive, which is in force since December 1998.
The Drinking Water Directive does not give any limits for uranium
concentration on a mass basis. I do not know any country which does, though
it is well known that uranium is a chemical poison (mostly for the kidneys)
and symptoms of poisoning might occur at much lower concentrations than the
ones which could give rise radiation damage.

In some countries proposals for limits have been made and they are mostly in
the range of 10 or 20 microgram/l. 700 microgram/l are definitely too high
and even I would not drink this water as my only drinking water supply. The
"total radium" is about 3 to 4 times higher than the EPA limit, the radon
concentration in water is relatively high, but since it will be emanated and
the additional concentration in indoor air will be neglectable. The
ingestion dose will be very low except for babies.

In this context it might be interesting to know, that in parts of Sweden and
especially Finland drinking water supplies show by far higher concentrations
of the radionuclides mentioned, for radon higher by orders of magnitude. No
negative health effects have been observed, no positive ones either.......

Finally I may give the hint, that there exist very efficient methods for
removal of natural radionuclides from drinking water. For uranium removal
commercially available ion exchange devices can do an excellent job, for
other radionuclides charcoal adsorption works well and radon can be driven
out by air. If details are wanted I refer to the literature or I can give
more details for instance about a research project in which my former
laboratory collaborated with Finnish, Swedish, German and Austrian
collegues.

One option is open anyway - to drink bottled water.

Best regards,

Franz




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