Uranium in subterreanean/tab water

[kinngrimm]

originally posted in Europeans they dont have feels
i felt this is worth having its own topic.

That might have been then. Recently, a study revealed that the tap water here is of better quality than branded bottle water like San Pellegrino, Perrier, etc. Yet people still pay a premium price to be able to haul bottles back and forth.

I just saw a new documentation on tab water here in germany.
Alarming i have to say. As it is in german, i try to translate roughly the content, this is not only a problem here i am convinced.
http://www.spiegel.tv/filme/ndr-45min-trinkwasser/

Over the past 50 years through fertilizer roughly 13000 tons of uranium have been put onto  crop fields here in germany alone. It now is becoming more and more clear that the subterranean water is being conterminated by that, wich is only now showing as it takes upto 50 years to reach those water resserviours.
Each year still, there are put another 160 tons uranium onto our crop fields in germany.

Uranium is part of the phosphats, as other heavy metals also. Through filtering it could be removed, but that would cost quite some money. The same sources for the fertilizer phosphats but are also already producing uranium for our nuclear powerplants, where they do filter the uranium out of it.

In germany, over 90% of all fertilzers contain these phosphats with Uranium, only those phophates wich are produced as end product from our animals "shit&piss" or other biological menur are free of that Uranium and are concidered renewable. Phosphats are running out worldwide, as other ressources too, estimated 50 years left for that product line though.

The main problem about the often already 5 times and higher values as allowed of uranium in subterranean / tab water, is if it is used by children who's metabolism is far more sensible onto Uranium then that of grown ups.
In germany there are some areas where it is already drasticly spiking the contamination and but the water provider instead of filtering, add ground water from further away as that is less costly.

The industrial union who is selling phosphat fertilizers are pointing out studies from USA, England and Australia, from wich they argue , there would be no danger coming from fertilizers. German Government officals are either not giving any comments or forbid others to talk about it.

edit: i make a sepparated thread for this

[Tibe]

Slightly angry that you necrod that "feels" thread. It should have stayed buried.

[Barracuda]

My German is a bit rusty so I didn't watch the link. How much radioactivity are they talking about (Bq/l)?

There are radioactive materials in the ground water naturally - uranium, radon, radium and polonium. The levels are detectable but don't pose a health hazard until they reach a certain limit.

[kinngrimm]

Slightly angry that you necrod that "feels" thread. It should have stayed buried.

it was the connection to what i remembered posting about the new topic in this forum.
Thread like eu/na/.... bad/good/whaever i don't like myself. For me it wasn't about that anyhow.

My German is a bit rusty so I didn't watch the link. How much radioactivity are they talking about (Bq/l)?

There are radioactive materials in the ground water naturally - uranium, radon, radium and polonium. The levels are detectable but don't pose a health hazard until they reach a certain limit.

Several things they mentioned.
There are 2 very large areas(states) within germany with in average highly increased contamination levels with upto  5x higher then the allowed maximum for tab water.
Everywhere they took meassures, they took earth probes from crop fields and nearby forrests with different depths. They took water probes from nearby rivers, all indicators show that the source are the phosphats from the fertilizers.

They did also took into account the base rediation, that every ground/earth sample has an inherrent radioactive %.

The health thread is mostly atm for children, as their bodies are more sensibel to it and do store that more within their bodies.

They talked also of 2 different health issues, the conamination in form of a poisoness effect, wich uranium poses dependent on the dosage(that being the bigger problem here) and the radioactive levels(wich are not that big of a deal yet).

The prognoses also says, this is becoming worse by the year, as whatever we put as fertilizer on 50 years ago is now reaching the subterranean water reservers and this process will continue and there had been spikes in fertilizer usage till only about 10 years ago where we used over 1 million tons of fertilizer in germany on the crop fields, now narrowed down to i think it was about 500k to 700k(not 100% anymore about those numbers) Anyhow as the prizes of fertilizer increased the farmers tried reducing their usage and have already been working scientificly to calculate the best amount of fertilizer per square meter dependent on wich crop they wanted to grow. Farmers still havent had a clue, as it is not on the description included, that there even had been uranium in the fertilizer nore how much per kg.

EDIT: The 13000 tons tehy estimated by the offcial numbers of fertilizers posted by the industry being bought every year and the propes tehy took from several fertilizers and the amount of uranium found in those, wich btw also often are a lot above any allowed limits.

[zagibu]

Well, how do you think agriculture can get better and better yields on the same fields? It's certainly not magic. Population grows, farmland grows, too, but not at the same speed, so you have to increase yields.

Don't worry about groundwater too much, the friendly guys from the food companies will supply you with bottled water from untainted sources far away for a very reasonable price.

There is even hope for the future, because they are now researching how best to market clean air and sunlight. Soon you will be able to purchase everything you need for a healthy life in any supermarket near you.