[olecapt]

The danger from uranium is chemical not radiation. The source is natural in virtually any old rock structure. It comes from the Rockys via Colrado River Water. I would also expect to find it in local well water which generally comes from rocky structures.

Some very conservative places have lowered the exposure level to 20 micrs per liter. Still 5 times the local exposure.

It is not absorbable through the skin but must be ingested to be a problem. So it does no good to treat your shower water.

If you want to play the game there are lots of other compounds available with even higher possible risk factors.

then again if you remove everything that opens up a new and poorly understand chapter about what you are not getting that you should be.

[macgeek]

https://www.freedrinkingwater.com/wh...sis-detail.htm

WTF do they call it "free" it costs $8000 TO START

Jonathan

[SportyandMisty]

Originally Posted by olecapt

I dealt with it in massive amounts in the semiconductor industry. Pure water is very corrosive...

Yes, RO water is quite corrosive to soft metals such as copper. It is also quite corrosive to soft natural stone; if you have a water feature (waterfall) that lets RO water trickle over many types of granite, you'll see over time that it "dissolves" the stone.

Most refrigerator ice maker manufacturers don't warrant their products for use with RO water. A few ice makers are OK with RO water. Stainless Steel tubing in general is OK with RO water; copper in general is not.

I get varying responses to how long it might take for copper tubing to spring a leak from RO water -- but it takes quite a while.

For certain industrial applications, engineers will first run water through an RO system, then put it through a re-mineralization cartridge to get a known amount of "hardness" of known composition back into the water prior to use.

[ScoopLV]

Originally Posted by macgeek

https://www.freedrinkingwater.com/wh...sis-detail.htm

WTF do they call it "free" it costs $8000 TO START

Jonathan

That system looks like overkill to me. I never said this was cheap, though.

[SportyandMisty]

Originally Posted by ScoopLV

She's not far from. But her WATER is up above 400 parts per million -- mostly sodium and calcium. Water softeners do plenty, but not nearly enough. I tried to show her the geiger counter reading. But she's so old, it's all "smoke and mirrors" to her. Einstein was a patent clerk when she was a "spring chicken."

She salts her water, and damned straight that's all anyone needs to do as far as she's concerned. Even though uranium chloride (uranium in a water softener) is even worse for us than basic, toxic as s--- uranium. It's better absorbed by the body, giving people all that radioactive goodness in an easily metabolized form! Her husband died of an amazingly quick onset cancer. I have no evidence that this was somehow related to radioactive materials in our water. I also have no evidence that it WASN'T. So I'm taking every precaution. I'm not particularly worried about the cost of the system, anyway.

Face it. Our water has uranium in it. If you boil potatoes, your boiled potatoes has uranium in it. If you brush your teeth, you're brushing with trace amounts of uranium. (And radium, cesium, and a sh--load of other "iums" that you don't want in your system.)

Solutions?

1) Buy a LOT of bottled water. (And how are you going to shower with bottled water, anyway? You want to hose yourself off with Chernobyl water every day?)

2) Make clean water at your house.


The double benefit is, if things ever go completely to crap, I've got 400 gallons of pure water sitting in my garage, right now. Ready to go. It won't sustain us for the long term, but it will keep us going for quite awhile.

You might want to look into a remineralization cartidge to plumb inline after the RO.

[m73m95]

Originally Posted by ScoopLV

Borrowed it from a friend. I don't have five grand lying around for an instrument I'm going to use once. (You can get them cheaper, but those are for detecting radon and such. If you're sweeping for trace amounts, you need a good one.) Also, since there is likely some uranium in, say, a granite countertop, care must be taken to take readings that aren't skewed by natural background radiation -- and there is plenty of that in Southern Nevada.

First of all, I'm not horrendously anti-nuke or anything. I actually think nuclear power is an OK alternative to burning coal.

That being said, with radioactive materials, it's all about limiting exposure. We've all got a little strontium-90 in our bodies, because we're all products of the post-atomic age.

We have radon blowing in the wind, and radium in most ground rocks.

But uranium is different. The government limit is 30 micrograms per liter of water. Which is almost 10 times what's in our supply. If that makes you feel good, great. I think they just pulled the number out of their ass -- coming up with a number large enough that they wouldn't have to do anything about Hanford, Las Vegas or Los Alamos.

Uranium's biggest worry is heavy metal toxicity -- it's poisonous in the extreme as well as being carcinogenic. I think it's better to not ingest ANY of the stuff.

We're getting dosed with radiation eating food grown with phosphate fertilizers, We're drinking water that contains uranium and radium. And we don't even know the extent of the toxicity, because a lot of radioactive materials not being tested -- they probably don't want us to know how much cesium-137 is in our water. Tokyo just detected some in their supply, first time since the early 1950s.

So, if you want to drink tap water and eat food regularly made with tap water, go ahead. But I choose not to. Cap'n Brainiac thinks that's dumb. He's made it to an advanced age, drinking tap water. So obviously, nobody else is suffer any effects of heavy metal toxicity or ionizing radiation -- even though every doctor on the planet advises people to limit exposure to any extent they are able.

I am able to limit my exposure to zero micrograms per year. That's the extent that I'm able. I'm still picking some heavy metals and toxic chemicals through the food I eat -- even an all organic diet is going to have a little. No getting around that.

I completely agree with you. Uranium in my water, IMHO, is not what is going to kill me, so its just a little further down on my list of things to worry about LOL. You have the ambition, and motivation to try to "correct" some of the problems with modern living, and I commend you for that.

We should compare notes sometime. I'm currently in the design phase of making a wind generator, and a few homemade solar panels. Both together should take care of, at least, my AC bill in the summer. Though, if the Santa Ana winds are gone, my windmill might be a bust



I have worked in a few nuke plants, and have taken the 2 week orientation class. It doesn't make me an expert by any means, but it really opens your eyes as to just what exactly "radiation" is. People are scared of the word. They think just the word will kill you. In actual fact, you would be downright shocked at the amount of radiation you are exposed to every single minute of every day. The universe is radioactive.

Having said that, there are certain isotopes that will kill you faster than you could even know what killed you. Imagine a fuel rod from the Palo Verde power plant (Where I got this information) places 60 miles away from you. If you drive at it at 60mph (Meaning it'll take you 1min to come in contact with it), you would be dead before you ever got within eyesight of it.

[SportyandMisty]

Originally Posted by m73m95

Yes, plastic pipe.....with copper fittings.
...

I'm pretty sure they are brass fittings - not copper.

[SportyandMisty]

Originally Posted by ScoopLV

Borrowed it (Geiger counter) from a friend. I don't have five grand lying around for an instrument I'm going to use once. ...

My neighbor is a PhD Chemist who operates a local commercial Cyclotron that manufactures the radioactive isotope Flourine-18 (18F) for local use in Las Vegas (Fluorine-18 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). He first manufactures ultra-ultra-pure water (18 mega-ohm). He and I have had several discussions on this...

I don't have his expertise, obviously (he has PhDs in both Chemistry and Electrical Engineering), and I cannot effectively summarize his arguments (I'm not even in the same zip code of understanding). But here is what I can tell you:

1) he has a salt based ion-exchange water softener, but disconnected it when he became hypertensive.

2) he doesn't use an RO system.

3) He gets Arrowhead water delivered to home for drinking & cooking.

4) He isn't worried about trace isotopes in the municipal water supply.

[jfkIII]

Just chalk it all up to the problems inherited by trying to make the desert a liveable community by humans.

[olecapt]

Originally Posted by SportyandMisty

My neighbor is a PhD Chemist who operates a local commercial Cyclotron that manufactures the radioactive isotope Flourine-18 (18F) for local use in Las Vegas (Fluorine-18 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). He first manufactures ultra-ultra-pure water (18 mega-ohm). He and I have had several discussions on this...

I don't have his expertise, obviously (he has PhDs in both Chemistry and Electrical Engineering), and I cannot effectively summarize his arguments (I'm not even in the same zip code of understanding). But here is what I can tell you:

1) he has a salt based ion-exchange water softener, but disconnected it when he became hypertensive.

2) he doesn't use an RO system.

3) He gets Arrowhead water delivered to home for drinking & cooking.

4) He isn't worried about trace isotopes in the municipal water supply.

Arrowhead spring water is certainly filtered and uv disinfected and may in fact be ozone treated...Arrowhead drinking water is likely ROd.

I would expect the mineral content is doctored to make a uniform product.

I use a water softener and a point of use RO. I am on a well but also have no fear of trace elements.