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by hadlock
1344 days ago
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I can read all the science about how nuclear material in the soil is safe, but also I can't in good conscience let my toddler roll around in it and put it in her mouth. You need 100% buy in from parents who will be raising their children there. Japan has removed the top ~8 inches of topsoil from the affected areas around fukashima, I think that is really impressive, but even then I would never allow my family to move there for any reason. That said, I'm generally in favor of nuclear. I just don't want my kid rolling around in contaminated soil. |
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Ignorance is bliss. Contaminated soils abound across the industrialized world, it's just that most people have no idea.
Moreover, there's legitimate pressure to keep it that way as people irrationally freak out when they learn something is "contaminated". It turns out that often times the best way to promote soil remediation is to turn a blind eye (at least to some extent) as once contamination is publicly identified costs soar as the public begins demanding ever more onerous mandates, causing people to stop voluntarily remediating, which is why lead thresholds are set considerably lower than for other similarly problematic but less common contaminants.
Just this past week we called up the city environmental health inspector to ask him to check out some painting work being done at a house whose yard abuts our own. We've done it before as we have two young children. The inspector is very nice and accommodating, and there's basically zero risk of anyone getting fined or handed any stop-work order. He simply nudges the painters to take the barest of safety measures, e.g. simple tarping (even if amateurish), to minimize leaded paint flake dispersal. And what more can you reasonably ask? Turning every house scraping job into a super fund site would just be ridiculous, yet if the law treated lead the same way it treated nuclear, that's exactly what would be demanded.