IS "OLD" WATER SUBJECT TO "NEW" CONTAMINATION?

According to a recent report, "ancient" deep groundwater is becoming contaminated.* Scientists tested approximately 6,500 wells world wide with the objective of determining which reached deep "old" water formed more than 1,200 years using radioactive carbon decay dating. They concluded that more than half of wells more than 250 meters (820 feet) deep produced mostly "old" groundwater.

However, more than one-half of the "fossil" groundwater wells showed elevated levels of tritium, said to be a radioactive isotope of hydrogen resulting from nuclear bomb testing. This finding suggested that some of the water in these wells originated after the nuclear tests in the 1950s decade.

The researchers concluded that "younger" water containing contaminates could mix with "old" water in an aquifer or a well itself could mix the waters. Thus, "old" water could become polluted by "young" water, essentially bridging "generation gaps".

What this report appears to suggest is that recharging of even deeper aquifers can introduce contaminates into those waters. In other words, deep waters are not necessarily immune from the polluted impacts of surface waters, shallow ground waters and earth excations.

Age may have its privileges, but it also may have its consequences.

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*Sumner,"Pollution Reaches Old Groundwater,"
Science News, May 27,2017, p.12

© Daniel J. Kucera 2017