Regulating tritium in drinking water

This article incorporates an article by E. Koehl from an internal Ontario Hydro publication, and a letter from the Joint Committee of Health and Safety of the Royal Society of Canada and the Canadian Academy of Engineering, submitted to the Ontario Minister of the Environment and Energy. The Advisory Committee on Environmental Standards had recommended that the limit for tritium in Ontario drinking water be reduced from 40,000 to 100 Bq/L, with a further reduction to 20 in five years. Some facts and figures are adduced to show that the effect of tritium in drinking water in Ontario is negligible compared to the effect of background radiation. The risk from tritium to the people of Ontario is undetectably small, and the attempt to estimate this risk by linear extrapolation is extremely dubious. Regulation entails social and economic costs, and the government ought to ensure that the benefits exceed the costs. The costs translate into nothing less than wasted opportunity to save lives in other ways. 3 refs