Ever Wonder Who Killed Santa Monica Bay?

[axolotl]

2 gms of tritium? The article is talking about 1.25 million tonnes of contaminated water.

[  .  .  . ]

I am no expert on dilution of fluids etc and you may be right to call bullshit, equally I call bullshit on a Japaneses government that simply wants to get rid of the problem by flushing it into the sea while it appears they are being less than honest about exactly what's being flushed into an ocean. An ocean that is shared by many.

Um, that's 2 grams of tritium in 1.25 million tons of water.  Do the math.  It's less "contamination" than is permitted in domestic water supplies.

Calling bullshit on the Japanese because they're engaged in a coverup for expedience is also bullshit.  Many international nuclear regulatory agencies are closely monitoring Japan's plan to discharge the water into the ocean and agree it's going to be harmless.  I assure you Japan is being completely honest and transparent.  Note that removing other more serious radionuclides from the effluent is going to cost Japan many billions and may take twenty years of effort.  They're 'fessing up and doing the right thing at great expense.

I'd suggest you relax about future Fukushima emissions and concentrate on plastic pollution, overfishing, etc., if you're really interested in human caused ocean degradation.

 

[fastyacht]

Sleeping next to someone in bed increases your rem count by much more than an entire year of drinking that water.

Humans have multiple naturally occurring radionuclides in them:

 Hydrogen 2, Hydrogen 3, Potassium 40, Carbon 14, very trace amounts of uranium 234, radon, radioactive lead, strontium 90...what else?

 

[fastyacht]

I wonder if it will be possible to ever put an accurate dollar value on the damages as a result of DDT dumping and use. I'll bet that when set against the total profits companies made from selling DDT, the externalities of the negative human and environmental health impacts will wildly exceed any profit anyone ever gained. And, decades later, it now becomes the government's (and taxpayers') problem to clean it all up at a cost of tens of billions.

Socializing the costs of polluting industries isn't exactly "free market" behavior when you think about it, but lots of capitalists seem to be happy with that part of the status quo. I'm a young guy and am really not excited to pay taxes for the next 60-70 years to clean up the increasingly disastrous messes created by knowingly polluting industry and environmental destruction.

At this point, the pollution is personal though. Even by the late 80s, the Delaware River was overwhelmingly "non-point source" pollution. In other words, counting up all the registered permitted effluent got you ponly less than 20% of the pollutants. Suburban yards and personal vehicles made up the bulk of it.

And discarded patagonia polyester (or in my case, lost in a capsize on Long Island Sound). Added my part to the microplastic miasma.

 

[Windward]

I shudder to think how much water from the SF Bay I have involuntarily ingested.

Ick...

 

[fastyacht]

I shudder to think how much water from the SF Bay I have involuntarily ingested.

Ick...

At least all that Delaware River water I ingested is mostly Malthion and Motor Oil.

 

[Windward]

At least all that Delaware River water I ingested is mostly Malthion and Motor Oil.

Well, oil seems more healthy than some of these man made chemical nightmares...  so that is, er... good?  I guess?

Nope.  Probably not.

As for Malthion, at least you can ward off the Vampires, right?

At room temperature, malathion is a yellow to deep brown liquid with an odor of garlic. It is a solid below37 °F. It is often dissolved in a hydrocarbon solvent before use. Malathion itself is not volatile. It is slightly soluble in water, soluble in alcohols and aromatic solvents, and of limited solubility in petroleum oils. The premium grade can maintain its biological activity unchanged for approximately 2 years if stored unopened in a cool, shaded, and well aired place at 68–86 °F.

 

[Squalamax]

Actually I do want to know. Which are the nastiest and what foods are they paired with?

Well fortunately up until a few years ago non organic strawberries were treated with methyl bromide. I think California phased it out in 2017. I still won't eat non organic strawberries as they are still heavily treated with insecticides and herbicides. Google the dirty dozen foods. Its a pretty accurate list of the worst offenders. 

 

[chuso007]

The planned Fukushima wastewater release meets drinking water standards;  the tritium is now diluted to less than 1,500 becquerels per liter, one-40th of the concentration permitted under Japanese safety standards and one-seventh of the WHO's guideline for drinking water.  The American limit is calculated to yield a dose of 4.0 millirems (or 40 microsieverts in SI units) per year. This is about 1.3% of the natural background radiation (roughly 3,000 μSv).   In fact, a Japanese official did drink the contaminated water only 9 months after the meltdown (Press Conference vid), and its radioactivity has decreased by a factor of ten through dilution and natural decay since then.

Since tritium is a low energy beta emitter, it is not dangerous externally (its beta particles are unable to penetrate the skin), but it can be a radiation hazard when inhaled, ingested via food or water, or absorbed through the skin, at high doses.  That's not the situation here. Tritium has a short biological half-life in the human body of 7 to 14 days, which both reduces the total effects of single-incident ingestion and precludes long-term bioaccumulation of tritium from the environment.  Its decay product is not radioactive.

So in theory they could pump it into the local domestic water supply but will dump it into the ocean because of alarmist public perceptions and cost factors.

Don't you dare using facts to prove things! You fascist!

sarcasm font:OFF

 

[silent bob]

Well fortunately up until a few years ago non organic strawberries were treated with methyl bromide. I think California phased it out in 2017. I still won't eat non organic strawberries as they are still heavily treated with insecticides and herbicides. Google the dirty dozen foods. Its a pretty accurate list of the worst offenders. 

What about all that Paraquat that they sprayed on your Weed?

 

[Great Red Shark]

https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/4967846/mapping-of-ordnance-reef-begins/

 

[AgentLocke]

Update:  Assembly Joint Resolution 2 (if it passes through the state legislature) would request that Congress and the US EPA take "all measures necessary" to prevent further damage by DDT waste dumped in Santa Catalina Channel.

Unfortunately, this is about the most that the State will be able to do because of the location.  Just thought that folks here might be interested about whats going on here.  As of this post, I am listening to the Assembly Committee Hearing on the resolution.

 

[AgentLocke]

Update #2:  Los Angeles Times Article: Stunning DDT dump site off L.A. coast much bigger than scientists expected.

I'm half-shocked, and half completely unsurprised.  The maps in the article also show the boundary of state waters that I referenced earlier.

 

[silent bob]

Update:  Assembly Joint Resolution 2 (if it passes through the state legislature) would request that Congress and the US EPA take "all measures necessary" to prevent further damage by DDT waste dumped in Santa Catalina Channel.

Unfortunately, this is about the most that the State will be able to do because of the location.  Just thought that folks here might be interested about whats going on here.  As of this post, I am listening to the Assembly Committee Hearing on the resolution.

What’s inside the yellow lines is State Waters.  The area between these lines is Federal Waters.  Seeing as how Governor Nuisance wasted upwards of $20 Billion on fraudulent Unemployment Benefits to Felons and the Russian Mafia (And to a few Nigerian Scammers), and $150 Billion on a non-existent Choo Choo Train, we don’t  much to spare!  So, like the Pension problem, Governor Hairgel is going to beg the Scarecrow (The one without a brain) and that dark skinned gal with rough knees for help!

 

[Grande Mastere Dreade]

look, we are not going to kill the planet, it will be here long after we have killed ourselves... 

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Marine scientists say they have found what they believe to be as many as 25,000 barrels that possibly contain DDT dumped off the Southern California coast near Catalina Island, where a massive underwater toxic waste site dating back to World War II has long been suspected.

The 27,345 “barrel-like” images were captured by researchers at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. They mapped more than 36,000 acres of seafloor between Santa Catalina Island and the Los Angeles coast in a region previously found to contain high levels of the toxic chemical in sediments and in the ecosystem.

 

[sledracr]

Now it is a "startling discovery" !!!!1!!11!!!

Scientists uncover startling concentrations of pure DDT along seafloor off L.A. coast

The dumping happened decades ago, we've *known* about it for decades, but... now it's news?

Disgusting. On so many levels.

 

[longy]

It was "assumed" that the chemicals would age/degrade/spread out over time. Now they are finding that none of that happens

 

[M@AYC]

whats the remediation plan? im sure some you geniuses have this figured out, no?