Is this another disaster in the making, or at least a poor precedent... 7

[JohnRBaker]

Just read about this:

Florida lawmakers want to use radioactive material to pave road

https://wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu/trans...ant-to-use-radioactive-material-to-pave-roads

And excerpt from the above item:

Roads in Florida could soon include phosphogypsum — a radioactive waste material from the fertilizer industry — under a bill lawmakers have sent to Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Conservation groups are urging DeSantis to veto the bill, saying phosphogypsum would hurt water quality and put road construction crews at a higher risk of cancer.

The Environmental Protection Agency also has a say in the matter: The agency regulates phosphogypsum, and any plan to use it in roads would require a review, the EPA told NPR.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[TugboatEng]

PG is already commonly used in building products or is stockpiled in waste dumps with little control.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479709000784

Is Florida a unique case or being singled out by the EPA for other reasons? It wasn't long ago that the EPA was suggesting using PG with additional processing.

 

[Just Some Nerd]

PG is already commonly used in building products or is stockpiled in waste dumps with little control.

As far as building products go, I imagine the environmental risk from phosphogypsum is probably far less once it's locked up in something, compared to say the kind of exposure and wear a road surface might receive. Not to claim that it's enough to make a difference, but I wouldn't compare the two use cases tbh.

Regarding the waste dumping, the link you provided seems to have serious concerns regarding the way it is being stockpiled, judging from the wording that's available to me...

I wouldn't say Florida is being singled out however, the EPA ban on PG in roads seems to be stretching fairly far back (1992) aside from the temporary lift in 2020/2021.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Why yes, I do in fact have no idea what I'm talking about

 

[Cool_Controls]

A few quotes from the article linked to above.
"Up to 15% of world PG production is used to make building materials, as a soil amendment and as a set controller in the manufacture of Portland cement; uses that have been banned in most countries."

"The use of PG poses unsolvable and troublesome problems. Environmental concerns are related with the large stockpiles of PG and their negative impact on surrounding land, water and air. More than 85% of all PG generated each year is dumped on land or at the sea. Data from the reviewed studies underline the impact of certain chemical parameters related with PG stacks. Research on impurity removal and on pollutant concentrations linked with PG stacks could allow PG to be used more effectively"

 

[dik]

People go to Florida to die... just adding assistance.

Just because they are using it elsewhere is no justification. This stuff can leach into the groundwater. I just had a long time friend die of lung cancer, likely caused by Radon. His office was in the basement of his house, and Radon is common in Winnipeg.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[dik]

...and their use of fertilizers is helping fuel their sargassum (sp?) problem. It comes home to roost.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[spsalso]

Perhaps if there were several billion fewer people on the planet, the incentive to use fertilizers would be lessened.

If there is less need for food, there is less need to increase production levels.

There are 8 billion humans on the planet. Care to guess how many there are of the next less populous predator?


spsalso

 

[IRstuff]

Perhaps if there were several billion fewer people on the planet, the incentive to use fertilizers would be lessened.

Not really; in 1972, there were 4 billion fewer people in the world and that's when DDT was banned, so if they were using DDT, they were surely using fertilizer

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

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[TugboatEng]

I imagine the environmental risk from phosphogypsum is probably far less once it's locked up in something, compared to say the kind of exposure and wear a road surface might receive.

That's an interesting point. As an operator of a fleet of large diesel engines, were being pushed to chase ever smaller particulate matter emissions numbers. At this point I believe the rubber tires on the road surface are producing more particulate emissions than the diesel engines.

 

[dold]

Is Florida a unique case or being singled out by the EPA for other reasons?

Florida produces most of the US's supply of phosphate rock. Link

Chemical processing of phosphate rock produces phosphogypsum. I'd have to assume Florida is trying to do something productive with (i.e., capitalize upon) the massive amount of phosphogypsum they have laying around. Link

Phosphate Deposits
The Florida phosphate deposit is one of the most economically accessible deposits in the world because a substantial layer of phosphate is only 15 to 50 feet below a soft overburden. Because of the economic attractiveness of the Florida phosphate deposit and the infrastructure of transportation facilities and nearby fertilizer plants in place in Florida, Florida is presently providing approximately 75 percent of the nation’s supply of phosphate fertilizer and about 25 percent of the world supply.

...

Phosphogypsum Stacks
America is blessed with abundant low-cost natural gypsum. There is also an abundance of flue gas desulfurization gypsum produced as a by-product of coal-fired power plants. As a result, the market for the phosphogypsum generated by the chemical processing of phosphate rock has traditionally been limited. It has traditionally been piled on land. This was the least expensive way to deal with the by-product, which in years gone by accumulated at a much slower rate because phosphate chemical processing plants could not run at the capacity they do today.

There are currently about 1 billion tons of phosphogypsum stacked in 24 stacks in Florida and about 30 million new tons are generated each year.

Other areas of the world, however, looked at phosphogypsum as a valuable raw material and developed processes to use it in chemical manufacture and construction materials.

In 1989, stacking of phosphogypsum became a legal necessity when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned the use of phosphogypsum. In 1992, this rule was modified to allow the use of phosphogypsum with an average radium-226 concentration of less than 10 picocuries/gram (pCi/g) for agricultural application as a soil amendment.

 

[TugboatEng]

Here is the discussion from 2004 about using phosphogypsum.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-108hhrg95739/html/CHRG-108hhrg95739.htm

We did build 2 secondary roads, one in Polk County and one
up in north Florida in Columbia County. We have tested both of
them environmentally and testing continues on the Polk County
road even until today. Testing by the Florida Department of
Transportation has revealed that the Polk County road has
gotten stronger with time rather than getting weaker. It also
has shown fewer repairs than what is necessary for other roads.

 

[waross]

My Google skills are not that good.
I have been looking in vain for a chart comparing the relative dangers of various toxic chemicals.
Concentrations, dilutions and PPM matter.

Does anyone else remember the origin of the PCB controversy?
At the time, public consciousness was focused on biodegradability.
As each pollutant had its 15 minutes of fame, the question asked and answered by the media was;
"What is the biodegradability of this substance."
None. PCBs do not degrade naturally but persist forever when released into the environment.
Then it was reported that PCBs were slightly carcinogenic.
I found myself working in a facility that was stuck with a couple of million gallons of waste oil contaminated with 100 PPM PCBs, twice the allowable limit at that time and place.
I asked a friend who was a chemistry PHD at a large university if I was I any danger.
He was director of NMR services and every research department in the university did NMR analysis including cancer research.
Part of his job was knowing the relative hazards of any sample that may be submitted for testing.
His answer;
"If you smoke, you have nothing to fear from that level of PCBs.
But, avoid breathing the fumes from heavy oils. That is much worse than smoking."

I am wondering what are the relative hazards of the substance spread out and incorporated into pavement compared to;
1> Millions of tons concentrated in a stockpile?
2> The carcinogenic hazard of the asphalt itself?
3> The carcinogenic hazard of the carbon content of tire wear?

--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[TugboatEng]

This is from my link above.

Mr. Lloyd. The road is kind of difficult to come up with
the health effect for one reason. Everything we have shown is
fairly normal. The land the road is built on is reclaimed land.
The radiation over the land next to the road is higher than the
radiation on the road. So the people that are living there are
experiencing radiation levels that are higher than they would
ever have if they built the house on top of the road.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Not exactly PCB's but something along similar lines and the disaster that it caused:

The History of PBBs in Michigan

https://www.michigan.gov/mdhhs/safety-injury-prev/environmental-health/topics/dehbio/pbbs/history

What's interesting is what's NOT talked about in the item above. The part where it states...

A shortage of preprinted paper bag containers led to the plant accidentally sending 10 to 20 fifty-pound bags of FireMaster (PBBs) to Michigan Farm Bureau Services in place of the NutriMaster cattle feed supplement. The bags were shipped to feed mills and used in the feed for dairy cattle. PBBs contaminated other livestock as well.

The mix-up was discovered in April 1974. By that time, PBBs were in the food chain through contaminated milk and dairy products, beef, pork, lamb, chicken, and eggs.

...left out one little detail. When the initial mix-up was discovered by the Farm Bureau, rather than destroy the contaminated feed stock, very little of which had been delivered to customers by that time, they decided to mix it with virtually all of the feed stock in inventory until the level of contamination reached a point which was below the THEN published maximum PPM (parts per million) for PBB's considered to be safe in livestock feed. Unfortunately, those figures were based on a faulty study which grossly misrepresented the real danger of PBB poisoning. It was only after the cattle and other livestock started to become ill and humans were detected to have also been poisoned, that the shortcomings of the prior research into the nature of PBB poisoning was questioned and the real danger was uncovered. Note that we were living in Michigan at the time and when this story came to light, it was horrendous when people realized that by then the PBB's had contaminated a significant portion of the food products produced in the effected areas of the state. Fortunately, we lived in an area where our local farms where not all that impacted, but that didn't mean that food in our markets hadn't come from farms in the infected counties, which caused a certain level of panic until the stores and supply chain had been purged of potentially contaminated meat and dairy products.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[electricpete]

There are 8 billion humans on the planet. Care to guess how many there are of the next less populous predator?

I give up. What is 2nd place, and how many are there?

 

[phamENG]

My layman's understanding is this:

1) In a large stockpile, drying of the stack forms a crust that helps to encapsulate the radon gas (the primary concern). It's more concentrated and thus is a huge risk for point source groundwater contamination, but as a point source is more readily controlled/mitigated.

2) If used as a soil stabilizer, there is concern that it will more readily contaminate ground water. Spread enough of it around, with no real ability to control the potential contamination, and it becomes a bigger risk than some of the huge stacks when taken in aggregate.

3) Yes, it's used in a lot of other products. The amount of radon they put off into a building is largely dependent on the material's porosity and covering. I'd be curious to see how the acceptability of these is measured.

4) Radium has a half life of about 1600 years. So if we spread this stuff around, it's going to stay there for a while, producing radon. That's a huge time horizon - that road isn't going to be there forever. What are we doing to future road crews when they strip and resurface the road and do other construction? Are we going to create relatively high concentrations of radioactive gas for them to contend with while they're working? What happens if the road is rerouted and houses are built there 100 years later? I suppose you could say it's not our problem, but I disagree. I'm a big fan of the usufruct philosophy of conservation/preservation. (The answer to many of these questions may well be no, but I'm going be skeptical of any study commissioned by the industry group holding all this stuff.)

 

[dik]

Surely there is more recent information than that.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[TugboatEng]

It's less tainted by politics that way, or maybe it's easier to see the politics in hindsight.

The article mentions the state of Florida having to take over stewardship of the stacking sites when the operating companies go defunked.

 

[dik]

You may be correct with your statement, but there are so many things wrong with that.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[ATSE]

Cement dust is deadly.
Fly ash is deadly.
Slag cement is deadly.
When bound together, not deadly.
I've had to explain this many times to city environmental compliance officers, who have blocked the use of standard concrete mixes for deep foundations (since they assume the carcinogens will leach and contaminate the groundwater).
Unless you have high competence in practical construction chemistry, a simple news headline might be a good start to the discussion.
We avoid using lead, and take special precautions in handling lead. And fly ash. And cement.
While certainly some chemicals should have never been manufactured, and should not be used ever again, and required specialized disposal. But, it may be that incorporating other types of hazardous materials into construction materials is actually an environmental plus.