Florida lawmakers pass bill allowing radioactive material to be built into Florida roads

Just when you thought you had heard it all out of Florida, you get another right cross. This one is incredible. The story is here.

Conservation groups across the Southeast United States are urging Gov. DeSantis to veto a bill that would allow the use of radioactive fertilizer waste in road construction across the state.

The bill passed by legislators permits the use of toxic phosphogypsum in “demonstration” road projects in Florida. Critics said this is the first step in a phosphate industry push to eventually use the waste in roads nationwide.

The Environmental Protection Agency prohibits using the toxic phosphate waste in roadway construction because it poses an unacceptable risk to road construction workers, public health and the environment. 

This bill will allow industry an easy way to get rid of their dangerous byproduct. It will only be a matter of time before it is in the waterways and then coursing through Floridians' bloodstreams. I wrote about this issue a few years ago - "Daddy, why do the roads glow?"

Phosphogypsum has a high radium content. The lifetime cancer risk for adults resulting from exposure to this waste is one excess fatal cancer per 10,000 people. The risk for children is significantly higher. Radium can leach from gypsum stacks into subsurface aquifers, it can be absorbed by plants, consumed by livestock and wildlife and work its way through the food chain to humans. Radium's 1630-year half-life from phosphogypsum stacks will likely remain a public health risk for generations to come. The long term economic, environmental, and health impacts of this have not been fully realized. Phosphogypsum has been banned in all uses since 1992 because it causes cancer. 

"You've got that nice Florida glow, especially at night." 

Is one extra cancer death in ten thousand an acceptable collateral damage so that corporate agribusiness can save a buck? Florida likes to play fast and loose with science, e.g. the surgeon general recently being found to have cooked the covid data. The sunshine state is quickly becoming the laughing stock of the entire nation, in so many ways.

Revelator.

Ron De Sphincter is like Donald Trump with a Herman Munster frown. Is it possible that this guy could make the trumpster look good? His scorched earth method of governing will not make him any new friends in the middle. There is no guarantee that the people affected by the bill will all be gay or woke and he is at risk of further alienating his constituency by exposing them to harmful radiation.

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Hawaiian residents forced to drink bottled water after forever chemicals found in wells.

PFAS contamination in water is widespread across the U.S. The Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy organization focused on toxic chemicals, told NBC News that at least 1,500 sites would violate EPA’s proposed PFAS limits for drinking water — 4 parts per trillion — which the agency hopes to finalize by the end of this year.

The EPA, meanwhile, said in March that up to 6,300 water systems — serving as many as 94 million people — contain levels of PFAS above its proposed limits.

The U.S. Army Garrison Hawaii said it does not know the source of the contamination but is investigating whether PFAS-containing materials may have been stored, used or released at military sites nearby.