Families Against Cancer & Toxics

By Frank X. Mullen
RENO GAZETTE-JOURNAL

The discovery of radioactive polonium-210 in 25 Fallon-area drinking water wells forced two dairy farms to dump their milk Friday and the farms will cease selling milk until their supplies are tested by the Food and Drug Administration.

Polonium-210 is a naturally-occurring radioactive isotope known to cause cancer in humans. The poison made international headlines last year when retired KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko was assassinated in London after being given a lethal dose of the substance. But officials said the amount of polonium-210 that killed Litvinenko “was hundreds of millions of times greater than the amount the public would be exposed to by drinking any well water in the Lahontan Valley.”

Fallon’s municipal water supply and the Fallon Naval Air Station’s water supply were not part of the well study, but officials said those water sources are “known to be safe.”

Scientists also doubt polonium-210 can put milk supplies at risk, but officials told the two dairies to discard their supplies to be safe.

Dr. Anette Rink, supervisor for the Nevada Department of Agriculture, said Friday she sent samples of milk to an FDA lab in Massachusetts to be tested and she expects results back within 48 hours. Rink said milk is not normally sampled for polonium-210, but said she doesn’t expect the Fallon samples to test positive for the isotope.

“A cow works as a reverse-osmosis unit would, absorbing the heavy metals and the vast majority of those are excreted or metabolized,” she said. “Milk is contaminated at a significantly lower level than water because the cow filters the metals.”

Fallon dairy farmer Bret Sorensen began dumping 6,000 gallons of milk Friday morning at the request of the Dairy Farmers of America, the cooperative to whom he sells his milk.

“A milk quality control person from the DFA called (Friday) morning at 8:15 and said one of the wells on the dairy was compromised and it would be best to quit taking our milk,” Sorensen said. “I agree with (their) decision. It is better to be safe than sorry, it might cost us and the (cooperative) in the long run, but it is better than shipping to the public without knowing for sure.”

Sorensen’s Dairy and Oasis Dairy were part of a random sample of wells throughout the county. All 23 dairies in Churchill County sell their milk to the DFA cooperative which in turn markets the milk to Model Dairy in Reno and to plants in Northern California. The other dairies’ wells haven’t been tested for polonium-210.

United States Geological Survey researchers doing well tests as part of a University of Nevada, Reno study related to the Fallon’s childhood leukemia cluster recently confirmed the isotope was present in 25 wells tested. The concentrations ranged from less than 0.1 to 67.7 picocuries per liter. Thirteen of the 25 wells had concentrations greater than 15 pCi/L, which is the Environmental Protection agency’s Maximum Contaminant Level for gross alpha radioactivity in pubic supply wells.

The EPA has no individual standard for polonium-210 concentrations in public water supplies and the agency does not regulate private water wells. Of the 25 wells tested, 24 were private wells and only one was a public water supply source. The public well tested low (0.2 pCi/L), the USGS said.

The UNR study is investigating the possible link between groundwater contamination with the increased incidence of childhood leukemia in the Fallon area, where 17 children have been stricken with the disease since 1997 and three have died. Scientists estimate the chances of Fallon’s leukemia cluster being random are about 232 million-to-one.

Recent research has centered on the high rates of the heavy metal tungsten in Fallon’s water, air and in biological samples taken from residents by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. UNR researchers are looking at heavy metals, including tungsten and arsenic, and radioactivity in groundwater to determine if those factors can be linked to the epidemic.

Although it’s unusual for partial results of a scientific investigation to be released before a study is completed, USGS officials said the announcement of the polonium-210 findings is consistent with the agency’s “well-established policy of informing appropriate health officials and potentially affected individuals about findings that could impact public health as soon as USGS has full confidence in the quality of the data.”

UNR scientists working on the Fallon study could not be reached for comment late Friday.

Churchill County Manager Brad Goetsch, who conducted a public meeting about the well tests Friday in Fallon, said that the state’s congressional delegation, the governor and some members of the Legislature had this week been made aware of the well-test findings before they were made public.

“I am impressed with the support that has been offered and we want to assure the community that we are consulting with the state and federal experts to release accurate information,” Goetsch said.

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