© AP Photo/John Locher
In this Sept. 15, 2015 photo, water is pumped from a well into an irrigation ditch near Fresno, Calif. Officials with the U.S. Geological Survey's Sacramento office and elsewhere believe the amount of uranium increased in Central Valley drinking-water supplies over the last 150 years with the spread of farming.
In a trailer park tucked among irrigated orchards that help make California's San Joaquin Valley the richest farm region in the world, 16-year-old Giselle Alvarez, one of the few English-speakers in the community of farmworkers, puzzles over the notices posted on front doors: There's a danger in their drinking water.
Uranium, the notices warn,
tests at a level considered unsafe by federal and state standards. The law requires the park's owners to post the warnings. But they are awkwardly worded and in English, a language few of the park's dozens of Spanish-speaking families can read.
"It says you can drink the water—but if you drink the water over a period of time, you can get cancer," said Alvarez, whose working-class family has no choice but keep drinking and cooking with the tainted tap water daily, as they have since Alvarez was just learning to walk. "They really don't explain."
Uranium, the stuff of nuclear fuel for power plants and atom bombs, increasingly is showing in
drinking water systems in major farming regions of the U.S. West—a naturally occurring but unexpected byproduct of irrigation, of drought, and of the overpumping of natural underground water reserves.
Comment: It is not only the US farming regions that are contaminated - uranium radiation pollution has effectively spread around the world from war zones where the
Israeli and
US militaries have frequently
fired uranium-containing shells.
History of uranium pollution:
- In December 1995 and January 1996, U.S. Marine Corps Harrier aircraft training near Okinawa, Japan fired about 1,520 DU - depleted uranium - rounds. The Japanese government was not notified for almost a year.
- In February 1999, two U.S. Marine Corps Aircraft expended 263 DU rounds at the U.S. Navy firing range in Vieques, Puerto Rico, which is not licensed for DU munitions. This "accidental" release was only discovered through a Freedom of Information Act request by the Military Toxics Project.
- In January 2003, the Navy admitted routinely firing DU from its Phalanx guns in prime fishing waters off the coast of Washington state since 1977.
The people of Iraq (1991), Bosnia (1994-1995), Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan (2001-2003),
Libya (2011) and
Syria (2013) experienced uranium exposure first-hand:
Immediate battlefield exposures of combat and cleanup personnel to "depleted" uranium are only the tip of the toxic and radioactive iceberg. Continuing environmental exposures present a much longer-term danger to civilians in post-conflict areas. The Royal Society (the British national academy of sciences) recently concluded that because DU may move into the environment - especially water sources - over many decades, "contaminated land might be a concern for hundreds of years" and
"contamination of water supplies or other sensitive components of the environment... might only become apparent after a number of years or more likely decades."
Firing of DU munitions
can immediately contaminate air, soil, and water with ingestible particles of toxic and radioactive "depleted" uranium. (Read more in the
original publication: "
The depleted uranium fact sheet".)
See also:
Comment: Fox News holds out this information as something a person can do in 5 seconds. What they don't tell viewers is that learning how to effectively use a martial art - both in terms of self-control and proper application - can take years. At best this sort of willy nilly "reporting" by Fox is extremely irresponsible, and at worst it could result in children being killed.
Not only that, but Fox is propagating "mass shooter" hysteria.
As for Krav Maga, it is an extremely aggressive and brutal type of hand-to-hand combat developed for the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and is used by many police forces around the United States and other countries. Unlike a typical martial art, there's no peaceful philosophy at its core. Something to keep in mind for anyone, particularly parents, who might think Krav Maga is appropriate to learn or teach children.