I have written about problems with ground water and surface water before with respect to radioactive contamination from things like nuclear accidents and nuclear explosions. However, today I’m going to focus on naturally occurring radioactivity in a regional water supply.
In the country of Jordan, in the Middle East, the climate is very dry and water is a big problem. Thousands of years ago, the area was not as dry and ancient water from those times can be found in deep aquifers beneath the Jordanian dessert. In order to sustain the current population of the area, it has been necessary to drill deep wells and pump thirty thousand year old water out of the ancient aquifers. Millions of cubic feet of water are being pumped out of aquifers all over the Middle East and North Africa.
Currently, Jordan is carrying out a major new hydraulic engineering project to supply water to Amman, the capitol of the country. The Disi aquifer in the southern part of the country already supplies sixty million cubic feet of water a year to Jordan. When the new project is complete, another hundred million cubic feet a year will be pumped out of the Disi aquifer and sent through pipelines to Amman.
The World Health Organization has been analyzing the water from the Disi aquifer and has found that the level of naturally occurring radioactivity in the water is up to thirty times higher than the level considered safe by WHO standards. The radioactivity comes from the natural uranium and thorium in the sedimentary rock that contains the aquifer. Not only Jordan, but the entire Middle East and Northern Africa are confronted with the same problem from the ancient aquifers.
The German Federal Office for Radiation Protection has run calculations on the probable number of extra deaths which may be caused by the radiation from the water based on consumption of two liters of water per day from the aquifer. In Amman alone, from a population of two million people, that comes to an additional eight thousand deaths from health problems related to radiation poisoning. This calculation is only based on direct consumption of the water and does not take other sources of radioactivity into account such as concentration of radiation in vegetables that are raised on land irrigated by the aquifer water. Beyond Jordan, the problem applies to hundreds of millions of people across the Middle East and North Africa. Using the same calculations, we can estimate that more than a million people may be killed by the natural radioactivity in the water they are drinking.
The Disi aquifer is mostly under neighboring Saudi Arabia where it is called the Saq aquifer. Tests over a wide area have confirmed that the levels of natural radioactivity are above WHO standards. For unknown reasons, it has been found that the radioactivity is highest in the parts of the aquifer that are being depleted the most rapidly. This is a pressing problem because if the radioactivity keeps rising as the aquifer levels in a particular area fall, then the areas making the most use of aquifer water will be the first exposed to the highest levels of natural radioactivity before other regions where the aquifer is not being so heavily utilized.
Saudi Arabia is treating the water from the Saq aquifer to remove radioactive particles but other governments inf the Middle East and North Africa are not being as conscientious. Libya is engaged in a huge project to pump water out of the aquifer in the interior and send it to cities on the coast. Jordan claims that its own testing shows much lower levels and is not so worried about radioactivity. That may be a problem because the European bank that is helping to finance the Jordan project has been very clear that continuation of the loan is tied to stringent testing of the water for radioactive contamination.
Jordan:
