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Viruses From Sewage Contaminate Deep Well Water
First time accepted submitter ckwu writes "Scientists once thought that pathogens could not reach drinking water wells sunk into deep, protected groundwater aquifers. Nevertheless, over the past decade, researchers have identified diarrhea-causing viruses at a handful of deep bedrock well sites in the U.S. and Europe. Now, researchers report where these pathogenic viruses may have originated. The viruses appear to seep from sewer pipes and then swiftly penetrate drinking water wells. Experts recommend that public water systems might need to start testing for viruses on a routine basis."
Shitty
Just drink bottled water! Oh wait, doesn't that come from the same place? Beer it is then.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
This is what happens when you say "in the absence of evidence it's harmful, we'll assume it's safe".
It seems entirely reasonable that it going to move around underground. Water tends to do that.
Sadly, this is not much different from all of the fracking and the like going on -- everybody says "well, it must be safe since there's no evidence to the contrary", and then people find themselves with flammable tap water. Then the companies try hard to deny that what they did had any impact, and that it must have been contaminated before (even when things were tested and came up clean).
Water will move around in cracks, and penetrate wherever it can. Human sewage is going to be full of pathogens, and those aren't going to stay put because we want them to.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
OK, now that I actually read the TFA I'm not terribly surprised - other than the fact that this study apparently hasn't been done before.
Researchers tracked human pathogenic viruses in a city sewage system. The concentration of the little critters varies as waves of infection go back and forth amongst the humans and other creatures whose waste is collected in the system.
The then track the appearance of viruses in a deep well under the sewage lines and find that about six weeks later, the same virus shows up in the presumably sterile well water with roughly the same kinetics (peak and ebb). So they are able to posit (but not prove) that the viruses came from the sewage system (as opposed to skinnying down the pipe itself or just magically appearing).
So, you have unmapped connections through the supposedly sealed off clay cap that lies between the sewage systems and the aquifer. Doesn't surprise me. One small earthquake 100000 years ago could have done it.
But it is a cautionary tale that deserves some additional testing to see how widespread the issue is.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
General Jack D. Ripper would argue with you.
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Scientists once thought that pathogens could not reach drinking water wells sunk into deep, protected groundwater aquifers.
And from TFA:
Groundwater models predicted that surface contaminants would require tens to hundreds of years to reach wells in these aquifers, which typically sit more than 700 feet underground.
They may still be right about their overall assumption, but were just wrong about those handful of wells being "protected". Basically, it's not THAT the viruses reached the aquifers (the models predicted they'd get there, but that it would take longer than the virus could survive: 700 years), it's HOW they did it so much more quickly than was modelled.
Also from TFAs:
Bradbury thinks that the problem probably occurs in any city with wells located under sewage pipes.
The most likely source of the viruses in the wells was leakage of untreated sewage from sanitary sewer pipes.
Emphasis mine. Anyone want to bet that the 700 year models were based on uncompromised pipes that didn't leak, and only calculated the time for potential contaminants to get from the sewage outlet to the well?
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
You mean I can't literally shit where I eat as a society, metaphorically?
THL phish sticks
I love the reference, but man, that was fluoride!
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
That would be the cyanide
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Leaving wild animals and their poops aside, there's plenty of human dwellings with a well at one end of their property and a septic tank& leaching field at the other. Anything that passes through the X feet of filtering soil is going to find its way into the groundwater. It would seem that, other than the "ick" factor, there's really nothing new here.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
"Have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rainwater, and only pure-grain alcohol?"
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
...that fracking chemicals won't seep into well water either.
Silence is a state of mime.
The article states that viruses in drinking water aren't regulated by the EPA. That's a bit misleading. Regulations pertaining to pathogens in surface water and ground water sources in drinking water are largely based on disinfection criteria that would remove or inactivate 99.99% of viruses from the water.
http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/pathogens.cfm#What%20pathogens%20does%20EPA%20regulate%20in%20drinking%20water,%20and%20what%20are%20their%20health%20effects?
Steve Robertson, PE
Las Vegas Valley Water District
Planning Division
Water Quality Team
Finally, after 15 years, a Slashdot article in my field.