27,000 Times the Radiation Limit—In Your Water
Outrageous! Under normal circumstances, the legal limit for radioactive iodine 131 in water is 3 picocuries per liter.
But in case of a nuclear accident, that standard goes out the window (or perhaps I should say, out the cooling tower), with the recent adoption by the Environmental Protection Agency of a Bush-era backdoor plan for nuclear accident response. A Forbes article about this travesty, “EPA Draft Stirs Fears of Radically Relaxed Radiation Guidelines,” sounds the alarm:
The new EPA guide refers to International Atomic Energy Agency guidelines that suggest intervention is not necessary until drinking water is contaminated with radioactive iodine 131 at a concentration of 81,000 picocuries per liter. This is 27,000 times less stringent than the EPA rule of 3 picocuries per liter.