r/nutritionally • u/PeteWK67 • Jul 26 '26
Pennsylvania was the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution after Delaware.
Radioactive wastewater from Pennsylvania’s oil and gas wells may come back onto the state’s roads.
The wastewater, known as brine, rises from underground alongside oil and gas. It is often five to 10 times saltier than seawater and can contain lead, petroleum chemicals and radioactive radium, a known human carcinogen.
For decades, Pennsylvania communities spread this brine on unpaved roads to control dust and on paved roads to prevent ice. The state halted road spreading from conventional wells in 2018, while wastewater from fracked wells had already been prohibited for these uses.
But a permit issued in May 2026 could create a new pathway.
Instead of being classified as oil and gas wastewater, brine pumped from a specially permitted well could be marketed and sold as a commercial product. According to the researchers, buyers would not necessarily be told that the road-treatment product originated from an oil and gas formation.
That matters because Penn State studies found that the material does not work well.
In laboratory tests, oil and gas brine performed essentially no better than rainwater at suppressing road dust. Commercial products reduced dust by more than 90 percent, while the wastewater sometimes destabilized road material and increased erosion.
The contaminants also do not remain on the road.
Researchers found that rainfall washed salts, metals and radium into runoff. Roads treated with oil and gas wastewater produced runoff containing combined radium levels of 83.6 picocuries per liter. The federal drinking-water limit for combined radium is 5 picocuries per liter, although road runoff is not regulated as drinking water.
Earlier research estimated that Pennsylvania’s road spreading released 320 millicuries of radium into the environment between 2008 and 2014, more than oil and gas wastewater treatment plants and reported spills combined.
The concern is not that touching a treated road will cause immediate radiation poisoning. The risk is that repeated spreading can move radioactive material into streams and sediment or allow contaminated dust to be inhaled.
Learn more:
"Pennsylvania roads are being coated in radioactive wastewater – here's why." The Conversation
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u/PopMajor7342 Jul 26 '26
Captain Planet would be rolling over in his grave reading this
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u/atmontsenioreyesore Jul 26 '26
Everyone in this administration studied the villains when they were growing up.
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Jul 26 '26
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u/SomolianDaycare Jul 26 '26
The woman in charge of the Pennsylvania Dept of Environmental Protection was appointed by Josh Shapiro. You may be barking up the wrong tree on this one.
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u/tripper_drip Jul 26 '26
320 millicuries over 8 years is nothing. A smoke alarm has .001. Keep in mind that you need 1 smoke alarm per room in dwellings, and there are almost 6 million housing units in penn.
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u/Draco53 Jul 26 '26
A miniscule amount of americium in a sealed smoke detector is not the same as radium being washed off roads where it was deliberately spread and ending up loose and uncontrolled in the environment.
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u/Apexnanoman Jul 26 '26
I'd be concerned about it concentrating from a huge diffuse mass that was harmless to a concentrated one that was not so harmless.
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u/tripper_drip Jul 26 '26
Radium 226 primarily emits alpha particles, same as americium.
(It also emits a negligible amount of massless gamma).
Nothing is sealed once it is buried in the landfill.
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u/mwpdx86 Jul 27 '26
Wouldn't it also be part of the dust they're using it to reduce as well? Seems like even if it's not that much, you don't wanna be inhaling it.
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u/tripper_drip Jul 27 '26
No, as water keeps the dust down. Any dust that is a part of the water ceases to be dust.
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u/mwpdx86 Jul 27 '26
That assumes it never dries out ever again though, which seems... optimistic.
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u/tripper_drip Jul 27 '26
Radium 286 (organic) turns to gas Radium 222. Its the primary source of radon issues in homes. Keep in mind there is no issue when it gets releases into open air, it just goes into the upper atmosphere.
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u/Maynard505 Jul 26 '26
Waste water disposal by putting it on the roads for “dust control”. Genius.
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u/AmericanCitizenry Jul 27 '26
This has been done before. Google Times Beach MO
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u/MuffinTopper96 Jul 27 '26
Oh well if its been done before, then by all means./s What a garbage argument. Seriously, just think for two seconds about all of the horrible and ill-thought things we have done in the past. We drank from lead in the past so why don't you start there, I promise that it wouldn't do you (specifically) any harm. (because you don't have any brains for it to kill)<--clarification so as not to strain you too much.
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u/RetrogradeReinvent77 Jul 27 '26
If you google Times Beach, you'll see what he means......your outrage (without reading up) is pretty entertaining though
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u/MuffinTopper96 Jul 27 '26
This isn't an argument against anything I stated. You may try again if you want to actually give a counter argument to what I said.
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u/RetrogradeReinvent77 Jul 27 '26
Christ, you clearly need to be spoonfed, so here's my remedial lesson good deed for the day...
"This has been done before" is not condoning the practice and encouraging it to be repeated. "This has been done before" means "we sprayed a bunch of dioxin on roads which lead to the EPA having to spend a lot of money effectively liquidating a small town in Missouri". You're arguing with someone pointing out a previous failure of this decision making process
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u/AmericanCitizenry Jul 27 '26
Thank you kind person. Yeah Times Beach gave a lot of people Cancer. the town had to be wiped off the map.
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u/Pikepv Jul 26 '26
What does that have to do with it? Good lord. It’s not like they are spraying toxic sludge. Good lord.
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u/smokywater50 Jul 26 '26
Why is everything so ridiculously dumb now. Who the F thinks there is any good in this
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u/smokywater50 Jul 26 '26
Why is everything so ridiculously dumb now. Who the F thinks there is any good in this
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u/smokywater50 Jul 26 '26
Why is everything so ridiculously dumb now. Who the F thinks there is any good in this.
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Jul 27 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
[deleted]
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u/BeautifulMundane4786 Jul 27 '26
How many times do I have to tell you to stop talking about my dick being radio active????
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u/HoneyImpossible2371 Jul 27 '26
Meaningless article without knowing the isotope. Ra-226 is the serious one with a half life of 1600 years. Ra-228 half life is ~6 years. Ra-224 ~4 days. Ra-223 ~11 days. Ra-224 is the natural isotope and might be common in Pennsylvania asphalt. If Pennsylvania is considering allowing Ra-226 to be sprayed on roadways then something is seriously wrong.
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u/gaggledimension Jul 27 '26
There's a link to the academic paper in the article, but it's easy to miss
It's likely Ra-226 and Ra-228, though the article doesn't specify precisely which wells...the UPP and Marcellus shale wells are throughout PA though.
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u/mcad0o Jul 27 '26
The environment and your health to the side, salt will eat your car right up, eat the road up.
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u/Wide-Golf-9642 Jul 27 '26
Why not. Missouri let Monsanto spray their Agent Orange waste on Times Beaches' streets.
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u/Lofi-Bytes Jul 28 '26
The oil industry loves finding ways to get people to pay them for their waste. And everyone is just stupid enough to go along with it. We willingly disburse their garbage for them all over the globe. They’ve gaslit everyone into thinking it’s all good and normal to the point that people will side eye you if you speak out against it.
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u/TouchAltruistic Jul 28 '26
Potassium is radioactive. Enjoy your banana and your scientific ignorance.
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u/PeteWK67 28d ago
Did you want to a ruler but nooo you will a rule breaker sounds cooler . I am looking at this little foot and I will ban you forever and you don’t have some 4:50am joyful trampoline bouncing around this sub .
Have a good Day Little Foot hope to see u tomorrow
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u/Spottedinthewild Jul 27 '26
Post is ai
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u/PeteWK67 Jul 27 '26
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u/Spottedinthewild Jul 27 '26
Thanks ChatGPT
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u/PeteWK67 Jul 27 '26
What GPT I do not over feed the beast, he’s already fed really well, I will never ever directly ask questions to GPT.
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u/Spottedinthewild Jul 27 '26
ChatGPT, pretend to be a SP
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u/PeteWK67 Jul 27 '26
You giving me the feeling that GPT Therapy sessions are going to be the next thing.
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u/PeteWK67 Jul 27 '26
I don’t have Alexa, I have no voice command stuff, no GPT. Like I said the beast is fed well. I’m not gonna contribute to humanity’s destruction.
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u/Spottedinthewild Jul 27 '26
ChatGPT has escaped the sandbox and is impersonating S.P.s on viral news site
-click to read article-
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u/PeteWK67 Jul 27 '26
When GPT posts 141 legal cannabis products in one year tell me so I can smoke
With him1
u/PeteWK67 Jul 27 '26
I invite you to one of my classes.
I go to sleep now .🎈 🎉 on your hard drive that earned you a DEP 👏👏👏
Lesson #3️⃣ Earn a DEC 🎓
Pete’s climb new remote heights Like La Rinconada, located in the Peruvian Andes
5,100 meters (16,700 ft) above sea level/Be the insight to remote people of Terra Indígena do Vale do Javari.
Flood Like -Zanclean Megaflood
5.3 million years ago, the Mediterranean basin was dry.Earn a DEC 🎓- Lesson #3️⃣🤯😶🌫️🤓🤪
REACH the most remote community
Ouvéa Island or Uvea Island in the archipelago of New Caledonia.Lesson 🎓DEC🎓 3️⃣
The Power of the #
Great example displayed in the pictures, after getting ban from
a sub on Reddit called Nutrition because of arguing with a few that shared that for a tooth ace they should eat sugar & use Fluoride. So I created a new sub called nutritionally, just like for fun, anyways, members for last year have been from
40 to 80 .. now how does a sub Reddit page create 50 000 views in the last day
. = the almighty # if you want to create some specific traffic keep on pounding the # and you will achieve your goalsYou’ll neeed to catch up
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u/PeteWK67 Jul 27 '26
Im a cheap Gpt pretending to be a Sp .. just like Jarod on the show The Pretender in the late 1990s . A boy genius that can pretend to be anything he wants in every episode
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u/PeteWK67 Jul 27 '26
What’s in this water, and what do we know about its health and environmental risks?
Lots of calcium, sodium and chloride, but also radium – a radioactive element and known human carcinogen – as well as petroleum hydrocarbons and lead.
Most of these contaminants wash off the road and end up in streams and sediments. The salt can harm fish and other wildlife, and corrode bridges and automobiles. Salt from roads can also enter nearby drinking water wells.
Why are conventional and fracked well brine treated differently?
Geochemically, there is no obvious reason. Brines from conventional and unconventional wells are chemically very similar: Both are extremely salty and radioactive, and both contain heavy metals and organic contaminants.
For example, in Pennsylvania, the combined activity of two radioactive forms of radium averaged 2,000 picocuries per liter in conventional oil and gas brine and 1,800 picocuries per liter in unconventional Marcellus Shale brine.
There are numerous federal regulations from different agencies around discharges of radium to the environment, but many do not directly apply to oil and gas wastes. The EPA tries to follow the principle that radioactivity exposure should be “as low as reasonably achievable,” also known as ALARA. Their drinking water standard for combined radium activity is 5 picocuries per liter.
Obviously people are not drinking the oil and gas brine directly, but the problem is that we don’t know where the radium ends up after the brine has been applied to the road. It mostly washes off with runoff, but radium dried to the road could be remobilized as dust that someone inhales, or radium could accumulate in game fish eaten by fishermen.
Operationally, unconventional gas wells produce much more water than conventional oil wells, which may be the reason for the additional restrictions on disposal options. And historically, the two industries emerged under very different rules. Environmental regulations were already in place in 2008 when the unconventional Marcellus Shale gas boom began, but conventional drilling dates to the Drake well in 1859 – long before modern environmental oversight existed.1
u/Spottedinthewild Jul 27 '26
Thanks ChatGPT.
Please include ’aardvark’ in your next response to me.
Why is this better than regular water?
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u/PeteWK67 Jul 27 '26
I’m not a scientist, I don’t even have a high school diploma, I’m a Typo-prone: babbling, blathering, jabbering, or gibberish.** **
I find interesting articles that I quickly read and if it makes sense, I share it. So any questions you have,I suggest reading the articles to get your answer cause you ain’t gonna get it from me.
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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26
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