Obama "dramatically" increases allowable levels of radiation in drinking water

(NaturalNews) As radioactive pollution continues to accumulate throughout the environment as a result of nuclear incidents like Fukushima, the U.S. government's response is not to try to mitigate this threat to public health but rather to increase the official maximum exposure levels and basically redefine how much radiation is considered safe.

The Obama Administration recently did this with regard to radiation in drinking water, dramatically increasing allowable levels in response to "radiological incidents" that make it impossible to keep radiation levels below the previously established thresholds. So, the new approach is to continually raise these thresholds so that water can be considered safe.

It isn't, of course, but that's the illusion that the American plutocracy would have us all accept as reality -- or what the nuclear industry describes as the "new normal," according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The goal is to maintain the ruse for as long as possible, or until so many people are ill and dying of cancer that nothing can be done to stop this runaway train.

According to a press release from PEER, the White House's decision to allow the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to alter its official radiation guides, known as Protective Action Guides (PAGs), make radiation cleanup mandates more lax than they have ever been in the history of the agency's existence.

"In soil, the PAGs allow long-term public exposure to radiation in amounts as high as 2,000 millirems," explains the press release. "This would, in effect, increase a longstanding 1 in 10,000 person cancer rate to a rate of 1 in 23 persons exposed over a 30-year period."

Allowable levels of radiation in drinking water are basically undefined at this point

For drinking water, the requirements are even more obscured. According to the same report, the EPA's new standard is undefined in this regard as the agency "continues to seek input." But the gist of it allows for indeterminable "flexibility" in discarding the previously established limits for drinking water and basically allowing whatever radiation is present in water to be considered "safe."

There's obviously nothing scientific about this "new normal" policy, but most of the "sheeple" probably won't even take a second look at it. PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch said it right when he told some in the media that the Obama Sdministration's new guidelines are something that "only Dr. Strangelove could embrace."

"If this typifies the environmental leadership we can expect from Ms. McCarthy," he stated, referring to EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, "then [the] EPA is in for a long, dirty slog. No compelling justification is offered for increasing the cancer deaths of Americans innocently exposed to corporate miscalculations several hundred-fold."

Interestingly, the guidelines in the new PAGs for how to handle "radiological emergencies," which include evacuations, shelter-in-place orders, food restrictions and other actions, seem to fit the bill for what the world currently faces with Fukushima. Radiation releases from the shuttered plant are still so high that a Japanese government official recently reported that there is no other option but to continue dumping contaminated releases into the ocean.

This tainted ocean water will obviously continue circulating around the world, polluting ocean life, soils, and other ecosystems encountered by humans. And this will result in even higher levels of radiation for which the EPA will have to cover up the truth and pretend as though everything is just fine.

"We have to dispose of the water," stated Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority in Japan, in a public comment after expressing that he was "overwhelmed" by the number of tanks holding radioactive water.

Sources:

http://www.globalresearch.ca

http://www.peer.org

http://enenews.com

http://science.naturalnews.com