Hacker News Reader

Comment by squirrelicus | Hacker News Reader

Ah scare mongering. The safety limits are put in place such that the exposure causes no measurable effects, plus a buffer for safety. The precision of our instruments is very, very high.

Naturally occurring uranium has a very long half life. Which means it radiates very small amounts in comparison to other radioactive elements like certain isotopses of cesium and iodine. By many orders of magnitude.

You could drink 10x the "safe" levels of uranium your whole life and have no ill effects. Holding a kg rod of pure uranium gives you exposure between normal background and a plane flight.

The outrage you're looking for isn't here. It's not another Flint.

View on HN

As others have said, we all hear "uranium + cancer" and assume the problem is radiation. Uranium is poisonous chemically too. Chemical poisons can also cause cancer.

"The health effects associated with oral or dermal exposure to natural and depleted uranium appear to be primarily chemical in nature and not radiological [...] Because natural uranium produces very little radioactivity per mass of uranium, the renal and respiratory effects from exposure of humans and animals to uranium are usually attributed to the chemical properties of uranium. "

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK158798/

It's a very big, very heavy metal. That it may impact kidney function should be no surprise.

> Naturally occurring uranium has a very long half life.

It's nothing to do with radiation, it's chemistry. Uranium compounds are nephrotoxic.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5457699/

Lead has an infinite half-life, since it's not radioactive. How much would you be willing to accept in your water?

I feel your comment isn’t very constructive and is a little demeaning.

Quit reading their words in your internal voice. You're the one attributing emotion to a statement with no emotionally-charged words.

We even had that story here on HN and yet nobody seems to have learned from it.

You assume that radioactivity is the only danger emanating from Uranium in the water. I was merely pointing out that it is not the only thing to be worried about. Elements can be poisonous without being radioactive.

Was that a little more constructive?

This is nonsensical. Lead's danger isn't from its radioactive decay, though. It's from its chemical properties that make it harmful to the nervous system.

Uranium's danger isn't from its radioactivity when ingested either, its a toxic heavy metal much like lead.

Sure, but why are you referring to half life if you're talking about toxicity other than radiation? Half lives are irrelevant to chemical toxicity (at least, not unless something decays into something with different chemical properties).

The commenter you're replying to made no mention of half-life. The commenter who did make mention of half-life with regard to lead, was doing so to show that framing the uranium issue solely as a radiation issue was misguided, at best.

The article itself mentions the non-radioactive component of the risk:

Though people think mainly about uranium's radioactivity, the danger in water mainly comes from the toxic chemical effects of the metal.

I agree that the likelihood of an individual suffering is probably very low. But that also means that it will be very difficult to attribute an illness to this. Cancer and kidney disease are common after all. Just because you can't measure something it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. Public policy has to accept this uncertainty.

Not to add to the sensationalism, but it is worth noting that U-238 is probably dangerous to ingest moreso because of its behavior as a heavy metal rather than it's radioactivity.

In which case because of the bioaccumlative properties of heavy metals, drinking 10x the limit as you say may not actually be so harmless. But I don't know what safe limits really are.

Excellent point! I wonder if safety levels are set based on heavy metal toxicity or radiation, since one is likely to be the dominating factor.

The heavy metal toxicity definitely dominates. Uranium is barely radioactive.

It appears to have a particular toxicity on the kidneys from my brief googling.

Besides the radiation, uranium is very toxic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com