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Studies find carcinogen in water near Fallon

SAN DIEGO — A federal study is linking high levels of Polonium-210 — a radioactive element and known carcinogen — found in water wells near Fallon, Nev., to natural geologic formations in the region, officials said Aug. 3.

The elevated levels of Po-210, as it’s known, come from the natural decomposition of granite in the Lahontan Valley near Naval Air Station Fallon in Churchill County, the U.S. Geological Survey study found.

USGS officials will be releasing data Monday from a study of 25 water wells in the rural area around Fallon.

“All indications are that the elevated levels stem entirely from natural geologic causes within the Lahontan Valley,” USGS officials said Friday in an announcement. The agency said it was planning on sending letters to affected residents in the region.

The USGS study came on the heels of earlier studies that investigated a cancer cluster in the region and found excessive radioactivity in the ground water as a result of high levels of Po-210.

Fallon spokesman Zip Upham said Friday that there was no danger to the drinking water at the air station, which relies on a system of three aquifers for its water.

Neither the surface aquifer, which reaches down to about 35 feet, nor the deeper Basalt aquifer, which sits more than 500 feet below the surface, has shown any high levels of Po-210. The air station and the city of Fallon draw their water from Basalt aquifer, Upham said.

“We have no issues with our base water supply,” he said.

But the intermediate aquifer, which sits about 80 feet to several hundred feet below the surface, has shown higher levels of the radioactive element, he said. Water from the affected wells should be treated through reverse osmosis filtration — a popular water filtration method by many homeowners — before it is used for drinking or cooking, he noted.

Polonium-210 naturally occurs in the decomposition of uranium in the granite, a process that creates alpha emitters that “have the ability to cause radiation issues,” Upham explained. “We have radiation in the background throughout our environment.”

Navy officials plan to update station workers and residents in the coming days, he said. He wasn’t yet sure how many of them who live off base might be affected by the water wells in question.

Polonium-210 most recently was in the news in November in the assassination-by-poison of Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy. Upham noted that Litvinenko had ingested Po-210 at much higher rates than the exposure from drinking the water in the wells with the elevated levels.