Uranium in well water

Attached are our well test results. We have a RO system for drinking water in the kitchen, and are debating putting a cheaper RO system closer our grow room, but not sure if we can use "unfiltered" water safely or not. We mainly have elevated uranium and the water is a tiny bit hard too, though not hard enough to need treatment for drinking.

Uranium is safe to shower in and use for washing your hands etc, but you aren't supposed to ingest it, although it takes drinking several liters a day over many years to cause kidney issues IIRC. A lot of houses in this area have elevated uranium in their wells too, but a ton of local growers don't even seem to care (some aren't even interested in filtering it out of their drinking water which is even crazier)!

On the other hand having dust from a 6 billion year old supernovae coursing through the veins of our plants surely must have some kind of benefit! I'm just not sure if a significant amount would be left over in the plants themselves or not. Maybe we should give it a try and just get a cheap Geiger counter? Ha. Or maybe someone can spot some other reason why we need a RO setup for plant water besides the uranium?

They actually use cannabis/hemp at Chernobyl to gather up and concentrate radioisotopes. When I was involved in that type of business Sagebrush made people crazy because it has a very long tap root to gather stuff, then ripens and the wind blows it for miles. Smoking radioisotopes is not a good plan. Just saying.

He walks into the grow room one evening and bam!

ive designed radium abatement systems in the past

uranium is a heavy metal like lead bismith etc.

the radiation dose u are getting from the uranium is tiny since it does not bioaccumulate well like radioactive iodine or strontium.

its the actual metal toxicity that is thought to be the most harmful.

the cat is right in that plants are more than capable of concentrating radium and uranium... mushrooms and shit are even better.

concentrating a minute quantity still leaves u with a minute quantity though. i personally would not worry what so ever about watering the plants with this water. you are several layers abstracted, you just wont get anything significant, nanograms or less per gram of plant material i suspect.

drinking the stuff all day every day of you life is where i would draw the line.

also i highly reccomend you investigate your radon situation if you havent... if you have a basement its likely u have significant radon production because in all likelyhood your surrounding soil is richer than normal in uranium.

Thanks for the replies!

We did have slightly high radon in the basement (just over the recommended limit - many houses here in Colorado have craaaaaaazy amounts so we got lucky there).

I forgot to extra results (they came back later as they take more time) - but we also had 1.9 +/- 0.2 pCi/L of Radium-226, under 0.6 pCi/L of Radium-228 (under 5 pCi/L of both is considered OK by the EPA), and a little radon in the water itself too, 210 +/- 30 pCi/L, if that matters.

TreeWolf said:

Thanks for the replies!

We did have slightly high radon in the basement (just over the recommended limit - many houses here in Colorado have craaaaaaazy amounts so we got lucky there).

I forgot to extra results (they came back later as they take more time) - but we also had 1.9 +/- 0.2 pCi/L of Radium-226, under 0.6 pCi/L of Radium-228 (under 5 pCi/L of both is considered OK by the EPA), and a little radon in the water itself too, 210 +/- 30 pCi/L, if that matters.

Click to expand...

what is the double asterisk explaination? the "**" after the uranium figure.

This was in some footnotes on another page, they were just flagging what is above the recommended limits I believe

"Uranium
0.056** mg/L > 0.030 mg/L
Increased risk of kidney disease."

TreeWolf said:

Thanks for the replies!

We did have slightly high radon in the basement (just over the recommended limit - many houses here in Colorado have craaaaaaazy amounts so we got lucky there).

I forgot to extra results (they came back later as they take more time) - but we also had 1.9 +/- 0.2 pCi/L of Radium-226, under 0.6 pCi/L of Radium-228 (under 5 pCi/L of both is considered OK by the EPA), and a little radon in the water itself too, 210 +/- 30 pCi/L, if that matters.

Click to expand...

makes sense... the mountains in colerado likely contain some amount of uranium and daughters. wind and water erosion probably bring it all down from the mountains into the top soil and alluvial sediments etc.

TreeWolf said:

Attached are our well test results. We have a RO system for drinking water in the kitchen, and are debating putting a cheaper RO system closer our grow room, but not sure if we can use "unfiltered" water safely or not.http://i.imgur.com/pPw3odV.jpg

Click to expand...

Always use R/O for cannabis meant for smoking. Not only does it produce the cleanest end product, it also makes for the most predictable results. Giving cannabis exactly what it needs, and no more, creates superior quality.