The current EPA-approved method to test for radium is to count radioactive decay in samples. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates radium because long-term ingestion is associated with development of bone cancer and other diseases. Perhaps the best-known Wisconsin example of the impact from radium in drinking water is in Waukesha, where elevated levels and historic drawdown to the “older” more radium-heavy water in the aquifer has meant the municipality secured unprecedented and binationally approved permission to pump drinking water from Lake Michigan, even though the municipality lies outside of the Great Lakes basin. Madeleine Mathews checks on levels of naturally occurring radium in municipal water supply. “Although trends vary by location, some water managers are noticing combined radium levels in this aquifer, known as the Midwestern Cambrian-Ordovician aquifer system, generally increasing,” said Madeleine Mathews, a UW-Madison graduate now doing post-doctoral work at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris. In some instances, water managers had to consider drilling new wells. These conditions meant costly treatments. Increased use of more precise testing methods for the low levels of naturally occurring radium in public drinking water supplies as they relate to public health compliance will offer better understanding of long-term water withdrawal trends on the presence of the contaminant found in the aquifer system that underlies much of Wisconsin.įrom 2019 to 2020, radium levels that exceeded public health standards were noted in 116 of Wisconsin’s 611 municipal water systems.

Radium in water