What is Digg?74 Comments
- RogerStrong, on 12/27/2007, -3/+31By that standard, YOU are nuclear. You too produce a small amount of radioactivity.
It's not from nuclear weapons or nuclear power plants - not from the nuclear industry, which most people associate with high-level radioactivity. You could call it low-level radioactive waste, but it's pretty low compared to even what comes out of the medical industry.
To put this into perspective:
The highest level - 1,000 Becquerel/Litre - is one seventh Ontario's drinking water standard. It's exactly equal to the World Health Organization's drinking water standard.
But THIS ISN'T DRINKING WATER. It's what's measured IN THE GARBAGE DUMP. If you're drinking that water, the tritium is the least of your problems.
More likely you'd be drinking from a well at least half a mile away. The amount of tritium is vastly less, having been diluted by the local water table. If you detect tritium at all (beyond what you get naturally in rain water), you're going to detect much worse things coming from the dump. - mearom, on 12/27/2007, -1/+19Bottle it and market it as a citrus flavored energy drink
- RogerStrong, on 12/27/2007, -1/+19No-one is suggesting that it came from "nuclear waste". The most common source is glow-in-the-dark signs.
- RogerStrong, on 12/27/2007, -2/+14Why? IT ISN'T DRINKING WATER. It's what's measured IN THE GARBAGE DUMP. If you're drinking that water, the tritium is the least of your problems. More likely you'd be drinking from a well at least half a mile away. The amount of tritium is vastly less, having been diluted by the local water table. If you detect tritium at all (beyond what you get naturally in rain water), you're still going to detect much worse things coming from the dump.
- zyklon, on 12/27/2007, -0/+12Their first mistake was getting groundwater from a LANDFILL.
- viggenguy, on 12/27/2007, -3/+13tritium is definitely not as dangerous as you'd think... it's produces naturally constantly in the upper atmosphere
- gtluke, on 12/27/2007, -0/+8oh no, we can't drink the water out of a garbage dump now!
- AdrewMc3, on 12/27/2007, -0/+8I would call it an isotope of Hydrogen, it's not that dangerous. You find it in heavy water naturally, one of the many things that would make it heavier. You shower in it everyday in low amounts, and drink it in water.
- zachsandberg, on 12/27/2007, -0/+7Tritium is the material in some military and civilian rifle and pistol scopes. It is usually contained within a glass vial in these applications for illuminating cross hairs under low light conditions. The military as well as regular consumers can purchase tritium without an issue.
- inactive, on 12/27/2007, -3/+10What do you think makes your expensive watch and compass glow in the dark? Tritium.
- iiBeLiEvE, on 12/27/2007, -2/+8The only reason I know what that is.....is it was in Spiderman.
- 0ceanic, on 12/27/2007, -1/+7tritium is the isotrope in "super heavy water".
im thinking its like .0003% of all hydrogen in water.
the article makes it sound scarier than it is. - Toshibi, on 12/27/2007, -0/+5I could read the words but your sentence was impossible to follow. Let me try to translate for you.
If this is true then it is definitely bad news for living things. Just pray to God this isn't true since we're not getting good water if this is happening. - auzziedigger, on 12/27/2007, -0/+5What's next? Dihydrogen Monoxide found in drinking water?
- MWeather, on 12/27/2007, -0/+5I have a rifle scope lit with tritium.
- affanjam, on 12/27/2007, -1/+6Link to full original story:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.2 ...
Also marked as Blog Spam. - bitterbug, on 12/27/2007, -1/+6Buried as blog spam.
- AdrewMc3, on 12/27/2007, -0/+4and the part where they go it's rare is well not true, it's pretty much everywhere.
- OUChevelleSS, on 12/27/2007, -1/+5Tritium!? Precious tritium?! Doc Ock will be all over this!
- Aensland, on 12/27/2007, -1/+5Turn off the lights / And I'll glow
- catalytica, on 12/27/2007, -0/+4BURIED as inaccurate and blogspam! A case study of a woman with 35 GigaBequerel exposure to tritium had no issues throughout her entire life. Check Toxnet and get the facts on hazardous substances.
- Ghoztt, on 12/27/2007, -1/+5The Ministry of Truth speaks! And so it must be true!
...why else would they name it the Ministry of Truth?? - strangehold, on 12/27/2007, -0/+4I will digg down this post because it doesn't link to the original author of the content, which is from the Globe and Mail. If the blog author wants to drive traffic to his/her site, fine, but at least source the original information and give credit where its due.
- Xanadude, on 12/27/2007, -2/+6I have a couple of Luminox watches, and let me just say that tritium is ***** awesome.
- viggenguy, on 12/27/2007, -0/+3sorry for the typo, but tritium at this low of a quantity really isn't harmful to anything
- minoss, on 12/27/2007, -1/+4Read the article jackass. This isn't from ANYTHING related to nuclear power.
- RogerStrong, on 12/27/2007, -0/+3Um, no. One place in Canada (Ontario) allows higher levels then one place in the US (California.)
And that's for drinking water. THIS ISN'T DRINKING WATER. It's the water found under a garbage dump. If you're drinking it, the tritium is probably the safest thing in it. - catalytica, on 12/27/2007, -0/+3the key is lots and lots and lots. which is not the case here.
- sipps, on 12/27/2007, -0/+3Dude, ***** Off
- shawnanigans, on 12/27/2007, -0/+3You better watch out because drinking water with this much tritium would lead to about .4 millisieverts of radiation per year. Normal background radiation being around 2.4 millisieverts a year. Sounds like reason to panic.
- boflaade, on 12/27/2007, -1/+4Would you give us reference to your last line, please. This a part of history that I and most others, are unaware of. Natives harvesting nuclear mines in WWII?
- catalytica, on 12/27/2007, -0/+3Nitrogen can kill you too but it makes 78 ppm by volume air. Too much of anything can kill you. This is blogspam fear mongering.
- inactive, on 12/27/2007, -0/+2Nobody said it was "on par" with uranium or plutonium. But tritium's half-life is 12.32 years, not 10 days. I was just mentioning that the facility I've been studying put a lot of tritium into the local environment as well as plutonium and uranium isotopes.
- catalytica, on 12/27/2007, -1/+3there are far more important pollutants in the ground water than tritium. a little ionizing radiation never killed anyone. you get far higher doses at the dentist.
- jaymzdean, on 12/27/2007, -4/+6Idiots have never heard of the "water table".
That would be....YOU. - 0crabby0, on 12/27/2007, -0/+2http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/r?dbs ...
- OropheR, on 12/27/2007, -0/+2The weird thing with Canada: It plays with the image of untouched nature, wild environment, infinite space, but there are a lot of pollution going on and strong lobbies supporting it. (IE: Abestos mines). I am not surprised to hear about this obvious man made radioactive pollution.
- catalytica, on 12/27/2007, -0/+2it's everywhere, but quantitatively it is rare.
- willy3121, on 12/27/2007, -0/+2God, you failed so hard
- heucuva, on 12/27/2007, -2/+4This article is purely paranoid drivel. Tritium is very rare and very prone to decay. When it decays, it becomes relatively safe helium-3 (regular helium, minus a neutron) and emits extremely low energy beta radiation. How low? Low enough that it cannot penetrate human skin.
If ingested, beta radiation can be dangerous to your organs if there's over about 150,000 counts (Geiger counter clicks per second) per gallon. The chance of finding water that contaminated is extremely low... and it'd be more likely to find common gamma-radiating materials (like Radium or Uranium), which I would be much more worried about, since that can penetrate skin, instigate painful diseases, and have the same potency for thousands of years (tritium has a half life of only about 12 years). - tidu, on 12/27/2007, -0/+2good thing, because we would have made fun of you if you were.
:| - RogerStrong, on 12/27/2007, -0/+1Sure - and there's a whole lot more than it what's under the dump. So instead of drinking 1/7th the safe limit over the year, you're drinking a very tiny fraction of that amount.
- catalytica, on 12/27/2007, -0/+1Phosphorus. Back in the day it was Radium.
- catalytica, on 12/28/2007, -0/+1edit: BIOLOGICAL half-life of tritium is about 10 days. So if you drink it as the original poster assumed, the relevant exposure is only about 10 days.
- AdrewMc3, on 12/27/2007, -1/+2or water anywhere, it almost impossible to make water not have this no matter where the source. Though concentrations are very low, and high concentration can be dangerous if you ingest a lot of it (lots and lots).
- hissir, on 12/27/2007, -0/+1It's true. We Canadians are absolute ***** when it comes to environmental issues. Although our energy consumption can partially be blamed on size and climate, our tolerance for despoiling natural resources, and polluting, cannot. We're also insanely crappy about enforcing our regulations. I've got friends who work in enforcing agencies (i.e., health and environment Canada) and they are quite good at making regulations which they, and affected industries, know they can or will not enforce.
- inactive, on 12/27/2007, -0/+1My compass and watch both say Tritium on the back.
- Peko, on 12/27/2007, -1/+1Source Article: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews ...
My only 2 cents re: Canada's loose policy is that when Canadian reactors produce and sell tritium, of course it's not toxic =). Most probable source is from some post consumer/factory cast offs indirectly from somewhere like Darlington. - amcnamar, on 12/27/2007, -1/+1Haha, that's where I was born... :S
- unpolloloco, on 12/27/2007, -4/+4EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!!!!
seriously, if you want an absolutely clean clean water table anywhere, you really have to stop all production of everything and kill all life.
There is pollution everywhere, and if its 1/7 of the who standard right under a garbage dump, id say thats pretty good -
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