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Dear Editor:
Staff at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), have approved a scheme to mix radioactive water with sewage before dumping it into the Ottawa River, in order to dilute its effect! The Ottawa River flows in the Ottawa Valley of Ontario, and it was called “La Grande Rivière du Nord” by French explorers. It flows through the lush Ottawa Valley and past the Parliament Buildings of the Capital of Canada. The Ottawa River is approximately 1,271 km long draining a watershed of 140,000 square kilometers. The Ottawa River was the route of explorers and fur traders to the interior of the continent and a part of the inland route between Montreal and Kingston. Later, it carried great rafts of logs to mills along the river for processing.
The radioactive water contains tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, emitted from SRB Technologies (Canada) Inc. in Pembroke, Ontario, on the upper Ottawa River.
This radioactive tritium binds with oxygen to form radioactive water – needed by all living creatures. We cannot live without water! The radioactive hydrogen in water can bind with the precious DNA of the cells which produce offspring, causing congenital malformations and disease. When the radioactive hydrogen decays, it forms helium, with detriment to molecules and organs of the body. Although the energy release is low when compared with some other radionuclides, this low energy damages cells and allows them to live with their damage, reproducing the errors in progeny. More energetic radioactivity often is so powerful that it kills the cells outright leaving no damaged progeny to cause chronic long term diseases.
Natural water contains no more than 2 Becquerels of tritium in a liter of water, but the CNSC allows 7,000 Bq/l (ten times more than is allowed in the U.S.) for industrial pollution. Even this maximum has been exceeded by SRB Technologies Canada) Inc. of Pembroke, which now proposes as a “remedy” to mix the polluted water into the sewage system of the Province, with human waste! CNSC has some primitive notion that dilution will do the trick!
While human waste can be purified in a water treatment plant, tritiated water goes through untouched. The watershed provides irrigation for fruits and vegetables grown in the Ottawa Valley, drinking water for domestic animals and humans, nourishes the grass for wild life and maintains the viability of the aquatic life in the river.
Citizens of the Ottawa Valley are potentially at risk, and should protest this ignorant pollution of the food web as should all citizens concerned for ecosystem health in Canada!
Dr. Rosalie Bertell
Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart
For those of you unfamiliar with Rosalie’s work, she is a tireless advocate for protecting the public from the dangers of radiation. She is the recipient of many awards including the Right Livelihood Award, or Alternate Nobel Prize.
See her bio here: http://www.ccnr.org/bertell_bio.html