Last week, I wrote on New Security Beat about startling new research that found very high levels of naturally occurring radioactivity in some of Jordan’s fossil groundwater. Measurements up to 2,000 percent higher than the international drinking water safety levels were found in the Disi aquifers in southern Jordan. Duke University’s Avner Vengosh and his international team published the results in the highly respected, peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Last Friday a Jordan Times story featured government assurances that all of the country’s water was safe—and tried to discredit the messenger. In a transparent attempt to raise doubt about the scientists’ motives, the article points out that lead author Vengosh is Israeli-born (he is now a U.S. citizen).
If the newspaper had asked water experts in the region, they would have found that Vengosh has extensive networks and research collaborations across all the region’s political lines. He has a long record of publishing with Jordanian and Palestinian colleagues—including the article in question. He is an old-school scientist (a geochemist in this case) who has little interest or patience for politics.
This simplistic implication that Vengosh can’t be trusted is made more explicit by an “official” source who insists on anonymity to peddle a conspiracy theory. The official “questioned the timing of the study which comes weeks before the financial closure of the multimillion-dollar Disi Water Conveyance Project.” Water and Irrigation Minister Raed Abu Saud went on record this week with similar assertions of ulterior political motives behind the results and timing of the publication.
Few Jordanians actually drink the contaminated groundwater now, but the Disi project would move the fossil groundwater from the aquifer to water-starved Amman, putting many at risk of consuming it. Ironically, Vengosh and his colleagues detail ways the water can be made usable for human consumption, but it has been left to a blogger critical of the government’s response to detail these proactive options.
I hope a regional or international body will move beyond the political wrangling and test Jordan’s Disi aquifer as well as the same Nubian sandstone aquifers that lie below Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Libya. Such replication of results is at the heart of the scientific method and should be done immediately. Research results, even when inconvenient, need to be shared, verified, and acted upon—not downplayed.
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Comments
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Ted Clayton Posted 12:47 am
06 Mar 2009
The radioactive substance in Jordan's water is Radium. It's a fairly common problem - in some regions of the U.S., for example. In areas with Radium in the water, local authorities provide advice to homeowners with private wells on removing it, and municipal water providers likewise treat the water supply (which they do anyway). Water-borne Radium is not a big problem. In fact, it's not a problem at all - once we're informed.
Vengosh (the researcher) concludes the abstract of the published paper, "High Naturally Occurring Radioactivity in Fossil Groundwater from the Middle East" [emph. added], with the sentence:"These findings raise concerns about the safety of this and similar nonrenewable groundwater reservoirs, exacerbating the already severe water crisis in the Middle East."There is an environmentalism-based interest which aims to halt the pumping of "fossil" and/or "nonrenewable" aquifers, and the wording of the research report indicates that Vangosh is part of this effort.
Had Vengosh used the more-informative, not to say 'more-accurate', word "Radium" in the article title, instead of the longer & less-specific (scare word) term "Radioactivity", many people would have recognized that the issue with the aquafer is a well-known condition, with well-known solutions that are widely applied.
Indeed, as per the reaction of the Jordanian officials, Radium in drinking water is not regarded as a safety problem, any more than any of a long list of other potentially harmful contaminants in many if not all municipal water-sheds, because effective treatments to eliminate this hazard (along with many others) are well-established and in use.
It appears that all parties involve - Jordan, Vengosh, 'the Green agenda', and the author of this post, are all motivated by interests which they neglect to fully acknowledge.
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Geoff Dabelko Posted 1:23 am
06 Mar 2009
Fallout in the subtitle of course refers to political fallout and was used in the Grist tradition of using a play on words in post titles.
Second, if you read my first post on this on New Security Beat, you saw that I cited a New Jersey study of cancer impacts from the same radium problem (although lower levels), suggesting that I was aware of the fact that this is not a problem only for the Middle East. You are absolutely right it is a widespread issue.
Third, I tried to point out the failure of the Jordan Times coverage to highlight the three ways that this problem can be addressed to make the water safe. These means are all detailed in Vengosh et al. but not mentioned in the coverage I have seen. Citing them in coverage of the article would have been a reasonable way to lower the levels of concern about the threat. I perhaps could have spelled out those technical fixes to make that point as well but I did suggest they exist.
Fourth, because these practices are well established as you say, it is all the more distressing that the response of government is immediate assurance of safety, questioning the political motivations of the author because of his origin of birth, questioning why Jordanians would be collaborating with an Israeli born researcher, and questioning motives because of the timing of the publication.
I ended my post calling for an independent assessment to be done to avoid this politics and establish verification. That is hardly a call to the barricades of a political activist or alarmist. Unfortunately we are all too familiar with the experience, in the United States and elsewhere, of instances where data and analysis that is inconvenient for the government is not shared, disparaged, or ignored. The article in question, and hopefully my post as well, merely call for taking such peer-reviewed work seriously and not ignoring it because of uncomfortable political implications.
Best,
Geoff Dabelko
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