[fireman15]

The contaminated water will surely kill Manatees swimming nearby. Bad news.

Despite the headline, state authorities said, “It is slightly acidic, but not at a level that is expected to be a concern, nor is it expected to be toxic.”

It is more likely that it will have zero effect on Manatees or anyone else. The biggest problem is that it may increase the amount of algae in the water. The risk from phosphogypsums radioactivity to humans is minimal. Oddly enough despite the common perception that the EPA has helped perpetuate that low levels of radiation cause cancer is contradicted by pretty much every study ever done on people who live with higher than normal radiation background levels.

For every 5000 feet in elevation that you are at the background radiation level approximately doubles. People who live at higher altitudes tend to have lower rates of cancer than people who live near sea level. People who are exposed to low levels of radiation where they work also tend to have a lower risk of cancer.

[chickenlips]

You are referring to nuclear or radiation hormesis.

The dangers of radon and low level radiation are another EPA con job.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2012/07/forbidden_science_low_level_radiation_and_cancer.html

[White Lives Matter]

Interesting. Thanks for the information.

[AZJeep]

Oddly enough despite the common perception that the EPA has helped perpetuate that low levels of radiation cause cancer is contradicted by pretty much every study ever done on people who live with higher than normal radiation background levels.

---

Yes.
Radioactive safety is the victim of “extrapolation at infinitesimal”.
From the Hiroshima studies, a fit line was created to correlate radiation dosage to cancer. That was done using extreme levels of radiation. Extrapolating this line, one gets some cancer risk even for infinitesimally small doses of radiation. However that’s proven wrong many times.
It seems that human body needs some level of radioactivity to function properly. Places with very low level of natural radioactivity have high instances of cancer, while the ones with high level are a lot healthier.
Ramsar, Iran has the highest level of natural radioactivity on the Earth. About 10x what the “scientists” consider safe. About as much as worst places in Chernobyl right now. Yet, it is famous (on Iranian scale) spa with very low instances of cancer!
Apparently we need some radiation!
Earth used to have a lot more radiation during the dinosaur era, and they were OK.
Actually we are constantly loosing some radiation and we will never get it back!

[NautiNurse]

The primary immediate concern has been the absolute volume of water inundation should the dike collapse. Original volume was around 600 million gallons of water. Models suggested a sudden collapse would result in an initial 20 ft. surge of water. The gyp stack is, by far, the highest elevation in the area.

It is reported the pond/lake which is actively leaking supports fish wildlife, including snook. The water is primarily salt water, pH around 5.5. This gyp stack pond was also the recipient of dredging material from berth 12 at the nearby port about ten years ago.

Additional concern revolves around the integrity of adjacent gyp stack ponds, which are considered significantly more toxic (ie unable to sustain life). The concern specifically relates to whether the walls of the adjacent ponds would also collapse with a sudden collapse of the breached pond.