This important public event organized by Safe And Green Energy (SAGE) Peterborough will be held Wednesday, April 11th, 7:00 pm at the George Street United Church located at the corner of George Street and McDonnel Street. The event titled “Tritium and the Quality of Life In Peterborough” is free and all are welcome.

In support of the Tritium Awareness Project and MPs who are calling for action, the International Institute of Concern for Public Health (IICPH) calls on authorities to heed warnings about public health risks from spills of tritium into air and water from Chalk River nuclear reactors. Tritium and other radioactive contaminants are being released into the Ottawa River, affecting the drinking water for millions of people in the communities that draw water from the Ottawa and St. Lawrence Rivers. Unless immediate and serious action is taken, chronic exposure to the tritium-tainted water will cause widespread and unnecessary damage to people’s health and the natural environment. Authorities have yet to acknowledge that the contaminated water will likely travel untreated into the ocean and along the Eastern coast of Canada.

The Institute questions whether the nuclear industry and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) are fully aware of decades of medical evidence of the serious dangers to public health from exposure to low levels of ionizing radiation, including birth defects and cancers. IICPH recommended the Ontario Ministry of the Environment to lower allowable levels of tritium in drinking water to a health-related standard.

IICPH founder Dr. Rosalie Bertell specializes in low dose ionizing radiation and argues that tritium should never be released into the Ottawa River. Institute coordinator Marion Odell reports, “Nuclear energy plants should at least limit their emissions to 10 becquerels per liter immediately. Ideally, tritium should not be released in our water, but that appears highly unlikely to be achieved until the nuclear facilities are closed.”

The Tritium Awareness Project February 2009 report states that the Canadian standard of 7000 becquerels of tritium per liter of water is 466 times higher than the standard in California. MPs Paul Dewar and Nathan Cullen have brought the matter to the House of Commons. Odell comments, “We commend the Tritium Awareness Project and the MPs for bringing facts about this disaster to public attention. IICPH supports their efforts to protect public health.”

Here is the press release from Dewar’s office:

OTTAWA – NDP MP [New Democratic Party Member of Parliament] Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre) is calling for a reduction in the amount of tritium — a cancer-causing radioactive form of hydrogen — in drinking water.

Dewar’s effort comes as Tritium Awareness Project announced that 28 trillion becquerels of radioactive tritium has been released at the Chalk River nuclear facility into the Ottawa River, the source of drinking water in Ottawa.

“I am extremely concerned about the high levels of tritium in the water we drink” said Dewar. “There is a host of health risks posed by exposure to high levels of tritium in water”.  Studies in lab animals have shown that high levels of tritium exposure can cause a number of health problems from miscarriages and birth defects to permanent genetic damage and cancer.

Government of Canada has set a voluntary guideline of 7,000 becquerels per litre for tritium in drinking water. In contrast, the European Union has a limit of 100 becquerels per litre and California has limited tritium levels in drinking water to only 15 bacquerels per litre.

Dewar has tabled a motion in the House of Commons that follows recommendations by a scientific advisory committee to the Government of Ontario to limit tritium levels in drinking water to 100 becquerels per litre immediately and reduce the limits to 20 becquerels per litre in the next five years.

“A million people rely on the Ottawa River; so the federal government must take serious steps to protect the health and integrity of this river” said Dewar who released an Action Plan for federal leadership in protecting the environmental integrity of the Ottawa River last year.

“As radioactive hydrogen, tritium contamination cannot be filtered out of water. Immediate federal action is required to end the practice of dumping tritium in the River and strengthen the regulations on tritium levels in drinking water”.

Dewar’s motion states:

That the House express its concern over the release of radioactive tritium into the Ottawa River from the Chalk River nuclear facility and call on the government to strengthen guidelines for tritium exposure in drinking water by reducing the limit of tritium exposure to 100 becquerels per litre (Bq/L) immediately and to 20 Bq/L after five years.

Letters have been sent to Mr. Michael Binder, President of the CNSC, and Bill Pilkington, Senior Vice-President and Chief Nuclear Officer for AECL’s Research and Technology Operations, asking them to clarify the amount of tritium released into the air and into the Ottawa River, or planned to be released, as a result of the December 5 accident at the 51-year old NRU reactor. Mr. Binder has also been asked to explain why CNSC staff are not providing accurate information on the levels of tritium contamination in the Ottawa River in their background document CMD 09-M7. That document states that “monitoring of radioactivity in the Ottawa River has indicated comparable average concentrations up and down stream of the CRL site in the Ottawa River”, whereas the actual monitoring data shows consistently and dramatically increased levels of tritium in the Ottawa River downstream from Chalk River as opposed to the upstream measurements. The increase is more than double.

Background : Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen, which is one of the basic constituents of all living things. Tritium cannot be filtered out or removed from the drinking water by any existing water treatment plants. Inside the body, tritium irradiates living cells and damages organic molecules, including DNA molecules. Such damage can manifest itself later in the form of cancers as well as defects in reproductive cells and embryonic cells. Scientific authorities independent of the nuclear industry, including the US National Academy of Sciences, have reported that there is no reliable evidence of any safe threshold of exposure to radioactivity. They have concluded that every additional radioactive exposure is expected to increase the risk of subsequent cancers and other illnesses, especially in young children. A becquerel is a unit of radioactivity; it corresponds to one radioactive disintegration every second. When tritium-contaminated water has been ingested, those disintegrations happen inside the body. In California, the maximum permissible level of tritium is 15 becquerels per litre of drinking water; in Canada it is 7000 becquerels per litre – 466 times more permissive.

If the California drinking water standards were used, ten trillion becquerels of tritium would be enough to render five years worth of Ottawa’s drinking water unfit for human consumption. This is an enormous amount of radioactive material.

This information contradicts assurances from the Minister of Natural Resources in the House of Commons to the effect that no radioactivity from the December 5, 2008, heavy water leak had entered or was entering the Ottawa River.

Media Release