RE: Cs-137 in wood ash

["Lamothe, Emelie" <lamothee@aecl.ca>]

I was asked to draft an information document for local physicians in the
event of a radiological emergency at Chalk River.  In particular, I was
asked to talk about the "worried-well" syndrome. I was wanting to help
put radiation doses to the public into perspective.  Wood ash seemed
like a good example to include because a lot of people (close to 85%)
use wood stoves as a important source of heating in this almost all bush
and farming county where Chalk River is located.

Emelie

> ----------
> From: 	RADPROJECT@aol.com[SMTP:RADPROJECT@aol.com]
> Sent: 	Wednesday, July 08, 1998 2:38 PM
> To: 	Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: 	Re: Cs-137 in wood ash
> 
> In a message dated 98-07-08 10:32:23 EDT, you write:
> 
> << I know that at some point this was posted on radsafe and the copy
> that I
>  saved, well...I guess I hit delete instead of save.  How much Cs-137
> is
>  in wood ash and what is the average annual dose from burning wood for
>  heat in a typical home?
>  
>  Emelie Lamothe
>  lamothee@aecl.ca >>
> 
> My earlier post on this subject did not address an estimate regarding
> the dose
> from  burning wood in a home, but a simple calculation from the use of
> ash as
> a fertilizer to grow vegetables and gras, raise cows, feed livestock,
> etc.
> 
> Cs-137 concentration in woodash from domestic burning ranges from
> about 300
> pCi/kg of ash from CA to about 33,000 pCi/kg of ash in Northern
> Florida. One
> could calculate exposure to wooddust in cleaning out a fireplace or
> exposure
> to a certain mass of woodash containg Cs-137 at any level due to
> direct
> radiation.
> 
> There was a lengthy article on the Cs-137 issue in the Eganville
> Leader
> (Canada) on Jan. 8, 1992, written by Ray Stamplecoski. The articles
> title:
> "Radioactive trees, wood ash traced to nuclear bomb test --U.S
> researcher
> finds ash thats 100 times more radioactive than levels of radiation
> releases
> prohibited at nuclear power stations." Another artilce in this
> collection was
> titled: "Survey Implications for the Ottawa Valley --"Is it time to
> kiss your
> ash goodbye?" --U.S. physicist.
> 
> The issue of wood ash from northern Florida having the highest Cs-137
> levels
> of any samples I've analyzed raises a potentially important issue of
> current
> note. The current forest fires raging in Florida have  reduced hundres
> of
> thousands of acres of  trees and vegetation to ash. A wildfile can
> release
> more than 5 percent of the ash generated into the air. Given a certain
> areal
> density of vegetation, and assuming that there will be an ash fraction
> of
> about 1% vs total wood weight, and that about 5% or more of the ash
> generated
> will become airborne you can derive a Cs-137 airborne areal source
> term that
> will be dispersed from a wildfire. The dose from this pathway in the
> FL case
> is likely to be small, but it could easily  lead to elevated levels of
> Cs-137
> being picked up in environmental air monitoring programs near nuclear
> plants
> unrelated to plant operations or detected in samples collected from
> any other
> air monitoring network.
> 
> This pathway was clearly documented at much  higher levels 5 or 6
> years ago in
> wildfires in the environment around Chernobyl when Cs-137 fixed in
> trees from
> the original accident was re-dispersed over a very wide area.
> 
> In 1991 when I presented my first paper on this subject: "Cs-137 in
> Woodash
> -Results of  Nationwide Survey" at the HPS Annual meeting in
> Washington, DC
> and dozens of news articles resulted, I got some interesting phone
> calls about
> this matter. One caller said he read of the Cs-137 issue in  "Garbage"
> magazine ["Fallout from the Fireplace", Nov/Dec 1991] and was a
> "Compose
> Officer" from Toronto, Canada. He said he was concerned what might
> happen if
> woodash was used in compost since the article in Garbage said to keep
> wood ash
> out of the compost pile [I never spoke to Garbage and never said
> this].  At
> first I thought this call from a "Compost Office" was some kind of
> prank call
> by a friend since I didn't believe there was really a magazine called
> "Garbage" or that there were jobs titled "Compost Officers". I was
> wrong on
> both counts and Compost Officers do exist in Canada.
> 
> Another caller from Canada was concerned because he was a chimney
> sweep and
> was worried that Cs-137 in the creosote buildup in chimneys might
> present a
> risk to him in his occupational exposure to it. I was able to give him
> some
> perspective that his major concern by far was his exposure to
> polycyclic
> aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and other organic carcinogens in the
> creosote not
> Cs-137. I told him a bit about the history of epidemiology and the
> initial
> documentation of a high rate of scrotal cancer in English chimney
> sweeps in a
> study by Dr. Percival Potts hundrends of years ago. I also have some
> data on
> Cs-137/K-40 levels  in creosote  vs. woodash on the same home which
> shows some
> interesting fractionation, but that is another story.
> 
> The issue of NORM, and NARM, and TENR [Technologically enhanced
> natural
> radioactivity] have all received attention. However, Cs-137 in wood
> ash
> whether from a home fireplace or stove or commercial woodburning
> boilers like
> in power production or the pulp and paper industry produce millions of
> tons of
> technologically enhanced fission product radioactivity [TEFPR  as an
> acronym??] in the ash generated
> 
> Overall, I found my interactions with interested news and
> environmental
> publications and private individuals on the Cs-137 in woodash issue to
> have
> been very productive, in that it gave me a chance to make certain
> points in
> numerous popular press news articles about relative risks of radiation
> vs.
> other agents and the inconsistency in regulating radioactivity in
> nuclear and
> hospital waste streams vs. other waste streams that contain elevated
> levels of
> weapons test fallout. The greatest antipathy to discussing the  Cs-137
> in
> woodash issue came surprisingly from nuclear utilities  which felt it
> best not
> to discuss anthing about radioactivity in the environment with any
> members of
> the public because it would do nothing but scare or confuse them. It
> seems the
> root problem is that nuclear utilities and their public spokesperson
> tend to
> think the public is too simple to really understand radiation issues,
> and that
> rather that deal with the deep public interest about radiation matters
> on a
> meaningful basis, it is best to just avoid interactions, keep a low
> profile,
> and just do the job of generating power. I believe this policy is
> fundamentally flawed and has proven to be nothing more than suicide on
> the
> installment plan.
> 
> Almost every publication of the dozens I dealt with on the Cs-137 in
> woodash
> issue, including Organic Gardening Magazine [New Ground Feature on the
> latest
> research: "Is Wood Ash A Nuclear Worry?, p. 18-19, Jan 1992] by Rodale
> Press
> gave me a chance to critique the final articles and correct technical
> errors
> or sometimes inflamatory statements without my having to have demanded
> upfront
> that they give me this priviledge [which would have killed any
> coverage].
> Organic Gardening's first draft said my claims about minimal risk due
> to
> Cs-137 in woodash might be considered an attempt to focus attention on
> radioactivity in the natural environment because of pressure vessel
> embrittlement problems at a nuclear plant in Western Mass!!!
> 
> At the time of Organic Gardening drafting its feature article, I was
> Operations Support Manager for a central environmental lab run by a
> New
> England utility nuclear service division, which also operated a
> nuclear plant
> in Western Massachusetts. The parent nuclear utility company was
> having to
> deal with neutron embrittlement of the pressure vessel at the Rowe
> Nuclear
> plant. Initially Organic Gardening wrote my statements about Cs-137
> dose and
> risk being minimal  might be a whitewash of the potential that the
> pressure
> vessel of this older generation plant "might fracture in an accident
> contaminating an area the size of Pennsylvania".  I was able to
> convince the
> editor that this comment was a "cheap shot". I told Organic Gardening
> I was
> an environmental radiation and public health scientist and that I had
> nothing
> to do with the engineering side of the utility. Further, my first
> raising the
> issue of  woodash radioactivity went back to the mid-1980s as did my
> initial
> measurements of Cs-137 in woodash-- at a time I was not employed by
> the
> utility in question or any utility.  Fortunately, the final article in
> Organic
> Gardening changed their comments about a China Syndrome like scenario
> to read
> on this point:
> 
>      "Farber acknowledges that some have questioned his good
> intentions here.
> He notes, with a laugh, that he has been accused of using his report
> to focus
> attention on radioactivity in the natural environment in order to
> "whitewash"
> concerns about radioactive waste disposal.
>       Farber stresses that although he does work for a nuclear power
> company,
> his wood ash study is neither endorsed by nor fundded by Yankee
> Atomic, and
> that several independent radiation specialists are not investigating
> this
> issue as well.
>      Stay tunes. We'll make it our business to bring you any further
> good
> science on this, uh "burning" issue."
> 
> Organic Gardening in answering its own question  "Is Wood Ash A
> Nuclear Worry?
> by stating that wood ash :
>      "....is likely to contribute no more that [sic] about 1 millirem
> per year
> [from Cs-137] of additional radiation to an individual eating
> vegetables,
> milk,  and meat raised on wood-ash contaminated fields."
>      "To put that number in perspective, the average dose of
> 'background'
> radiation that we each receive 'from environmental sources' is 360
> millirems
> per year. So woodash fertlilizer does not seem to pose a large
> radioactive
> risk."
> 
> If a societal consensus could be reached among enviromental interests
> that an
> increment of 1 millirem per year from fission products "does not seem
> to pose
> a large radioactive risk." we would be well on our way to defining de
> minimus
> and nuclear interests being able to license nuclear waste disposal
> sites.
> Perhaps by taking  Organic Gardening's statements at face value on the
> CS-137
> dose/risk issue as a precedent we can begin to discuss the issue more
> rationally with the public.
> 
> What this one case makes clear is that the only way to get any
> interest to
> think about what constitutes an "acceptable" level of risk, is to
> connect the
> risk factor to something the individual can relate to. With woodash
> Cs-137 we
> are dealing with a fission product in a waste stream the individual
> often
> generates and uses as a fertilizer. We are not dealing with natural
> isotopes
> vs. fission products or radiation risks vs. other types of risks. 
> 
> When I posed the tongue-in-cheek question: "Woodburners and organic
> farmers
> --Is it time to kiss your ash goodbye?" I was not trying to convince
> anyone of
> anything, but simply posing a legitimate question. Would an individual
> homeower, because Cs-137 is present in woodash from domestic
> woodburning at
> levels of 20,000 pCi/kg [the typical levels in northern New England
> and
> Canada] be willing to spend  $200 per cu.ft. to dispose of the
> woodash. What
> would this disposal cost do to the economics of domestic woodburning.
> Industrial woodburning generated 905,000 tons of ash (63%) and
> residential
> woodburning about 543,000 tons of the total of 1,446,000 tons of total
> woodash
> produced in the US in 1989. As Science News reported ["Wood ash: The
> unregulated radwaste"]: 
> 
>      "if ash were subject to the same regulations, he says [ as
> low-level
> nuclear waste streams] its disposal would cost U.S. wood burners more
> than $30
> billion [at 1991 prices] annually."
> 
> These kinds of comparisons get peoples attention and make both
> homeowners and
> industrial woodburners stop and suddently think about what is sensible
> when it
> comes to regulating low-level nuclear waste streams. 
> 
> The Cs-137 in wood ash issue and the potential pathways of exposure to
> the
> public was raised by critics in 1991 concerning the licensing of a 50
> MW(e)
> wood burning power plant in Killingly, CT. I was retained as an expert
> witness
> by the host city of Killingly on the licensing of this plant and
> testified at
> a DEM hearing on environmental impacts. I developed a basic sampling
> protocol
> to characterize the radiological impacts of this plant which the
> developer
> vehemently opposed conducting. Before the issue was settled, the State
> of
> Connecticut voted to approved an $18 million buyout deal by Northeast
> Utlities
> to payoff the private developer for sunk costs to cancel the project
> at that
> moment rather than complete the $70 million dollar project.   
> 
> I was later told by the Attorney for the developer who cross-examined
> me very
> harshly about my report as to characterizing the radiological impacts
> of this
> wood fired power plant [which I testified were likely to be small but
> never
> adequately measured to date] that the radioactivity issue was the
> "nail in the
> coffin" for the project. Killing the Killingly project was certainly
> not my
> intention, but perhaps resulted in some corporate non-nuclear
> interests
> appreciating the impact which undue concern about low-level
> radioactivity can
> have on industrial operations, perhaps even their own.
> 
> 
> Stewart Farber, MS Public Health
> Consulting Scientist
> Public Health Sciences
> 19 Stuart St.
> Pawtucket, RI 02860
> 
> Phone: (401) 727-4947   Fax: (401) 727-2032   E-mail:
> radproject@usa.net
> 
>