The Fish Unlimited "Fact" Sheet

[js_dukelow@ccmail.pnl.gov]

karav@bnlux1.bnl.gov (Kara Villamil) wrote:

> Subject: Please critique this fact sheet!

> I'm a new subscriber, from the Public Affairs Office at Brookhaven 
> National Laboratory, a DOE basic (non-defense) research lab on Long 
> Island, New York.

> The issue is tritium in the groundwater and surface/ground water. We're 
> going through a public uproar over an effort to upgrade our sewage 
> treatment plant by building underground aeration tanks. 

> Because our water table is only a few feet below the ground here, the 
> construction project requires temporary dewatering, or groundwater pumping. 
> Most of the water will be pumped up and into sand filter beds nearby. But 
> as a contingency, we had to apply for a permit to put some of the 
> groundwater into the Peconic River's dry bed, where our treated effluent 
> usually goes. This would only be done at a rate of a million gallons a day 
> for a max of 2 months, and the water would recharge to groundwater through 
> the riverbed before it reached the flowing river. The state department of 
> environmental conservation has given us a permit to go ahead. 

> Here's the thing: Because the groundwater under the lab contains trace 
> amounts of tritium from our research reactor, a community activist has
> been able to whip up public sentiment and media attention to the point
> that we have announced we'll stop work on the project, step back and
> re-evaluation and risk losing the funding for the upgrade forever. 

> The tritium level is well within the state drinking water standard.

> The activist, from Fish Unlimited, has put out the following "fact sheet"
> (below) about the project.

> _____________________________________________________________
> Fish Unlimited
> Brookhaven National Laboratory "Dewatering" Project Fact Sheet

> Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) has been issued a permit by the New
> York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to discharge up
> to 936,000,000 gallons of ground water contaminated with the following
> contaminants into the Peconic River:

A million gallons a day for 60 days = 936,000,000 gallons?

> Copper, lead, nickel, silver, ammonia, nitrate and nitrite, 1-1-1
> trichloroethane, methylene chloride, toluene, cyanids, tritium, gross
> alpha, gross beta, strontium-90, ph range to be within 5.8-9.0.

> BNL states that the levels of above all meet drinking water standards
> however low "acceptable" levels of tritium, have been proven to cause
> cancer, and specifically breast cancer.

It would be interesting to see the documentation of those "proofs".

> Tritium has a half life of 12.5 years. At this rate it will be in our
> waters and food chain (shellfish and finfish) for approx. 250 years.

> Tritium not only causes excessively high mortality rates in juvenile shell
> and finfish, but destroys the immune system of those that survive.

> Those finfish and shellfish that do survive also become contaminated with
> the Tritium, thus causing humans who consume them to also suffer
> contamination.

> There is a strong and proven correlation with regard to cancer levels,
> specifically breast cancer, and "acceptable" levels of radioactive
> contamination.

There is so much wrong with the Fish Unlimited "Fact" Sheet, that it's hard 
to know where to begin.  There has been a lot of discussion on RADSAFE in 
the last few months on the "strong and proven correlation".  I'll limit 
myself to a few comments about tritium.

Tritium decays to stable helium-3 with a half-life of 12.28 years, emitting 
a beta with average energy of 5685 ev and maximum energy of 18601 ev (Negin 
1987).  Because of the low energy of the beta, it will travel only a short 
distance in air (fractions of an inch) and even less in liquid or solid 
materials (on the order of a micron).  Also because of these low energies, 
very sensitive instruments are required to even detect the presence of 
tritium.

Hence, tritium only poses a risk to humans, animals, or plants when 
incorporated into the body by inhalation, absorption through the skin, or 
ingestion of tritiated food or water.  Because of the physical-chemical 
similarity of HTO to HOH (ordinary water), it will not tend to bio-
concentrate in any particular species, body organ, or cell type.  As with 
other body water, HTO will have a biological half-life of around 10 days.  
Tissue water HTO will be incorporated, at a certain rate, into organic 
molecules within the body.  This organically bound tritium (OBT) will have 
a significantly longer biological half life.  As OBT decays, the emitted 
beta and the remaining helium-3 will damage the host molecule and nearby 
molecules. 

The rate of conversion of HTO to OBT is small enough that, for a large 
acute exposure of HT and HTO, only 1-2% of the tritium will become 
organically bound.  On the other hand, for chronic exposure to low levels 
of tritium, the equilibrium level of OBT may reach 35% of total tissure-
bound hydrogen in the body, with a resultant, significantly longer 
effective biological half-life for the tritium (Straume 1991).

What all of this means for BNL's situation:

1)  The 12.28 year half life of tritium is not very relevant, because of 
    the fact that only tritium inside the body is harmful, and because half 
    of the water (including the HTO) is rolled out of the body within 10 
    days. 

2)  The 10 day biological half life of body water implies that the tritium 
    concentration in body water will quickly (i.e., within a couple of 
    months) equilibrate with the average concentration in the individual's 
    sources of body water.  If a person get 95% of their water intake from 
    food, fish from somewhere other than the Peconic River, beer, wine, 
    soft drinks, designer water, etc., then their equilibrium tritium 
    concentration will be correspondingly lower.

3)  Since the lab's "dumping" to the dry river bed is to be limited to 2 
    months, at the end of that period, tritium levels will quickly (i.e., 
    in a few weeks) re-equilibrate at the background level of tritium 
    concentration.

4)  For the short time period (2 months) and the low concentrations of 
    tritium (below drinking water standards), I don't believe a significant 
    amount of the tritium will become organically bound in proteins, 
    lipids, DNA, etc. (but I haven't tried to figure out how much).

Best regards.

Jim Dukelow
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Richland, WA

js_dukelow@pnl.gov

"The ideas expressed above are mine, and not my employer's."