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One popular New Mexico hiking trail is as radioactive as Chernobyl. Acid Canyon may sound like a great place to drop a couple hits of something psychedelic before tripping out on nature but it’s not. It’s “dangerously contaminated with radiation.” The site near Los Alamos, New Mexico got it’s name and tendency to glow in the dark because from “1943 to 1964, liquid wastes from nuclear research at Los Alamos National Lab” were piped in to there. The levels are officially safe but environmentalists say that’s not the whole truth.
Still radioactive today
New tests discovered that the “popular hiking and biking trail near the birthplace of the atomic bomb” is “still radioactive today at levels akin to the site of the Soviet Union’s Chernobyl nuclear disaster.”
The nuclear bomb tests at Los Alamos were a long time ago but Acid Canyon is still making Geiger counters go spastic. It’s recently been found to be more contaminated than the experts believed.
Biochemist Michael Ketterer collected the “shocking contamination data.” The public needs to be warned about the danger and he’s leading the charge for official notice signs displayed across the trail. People need to know how radioactive it is before they go in. Especially if they plan on spending an extended period of time there. They don’t have to worry about a fatal dose on a camping trip but it could cause other serious problems on down the road.
Popular US park as radioactive as Chernobyl, says expert: 'I've never seen anything quite like it'
"A scenic hiking trail has been discovered to be dangerously contaminated with radiation.
New tests have discovered that Acid Canyon — a popular hiking and biking trail near the… pic.twitter.com/CDR9fLlbfi
— judy morris (@judymorris3) August 28, 2024
“While outdoor enthusiasts may not be in immediate danger while traveling through Acid Canyon’s pine tree-lined trail, Ketterer emphasized that New Mexico state and local officials should warn visitors to avoid coming in contact with water in the area.”
Ketterer says he’s “never seen anything quite like it in the United States.” As a professor emeritus at Northern Arizona University he knows what he’s talking about. “This is an unrestricted area.” It shouldn’t be.
He took samples of water which prove how radioactive the canyon is today. “It’s just an extreme example of very high concentrations of plutonium in soils and sediments.”
Hiding in plain sight
The radioactive danger is “hiding in plain sight,” Professor Ketterer explains. While his numbers suggest levels in the “super weapons grade plutonium” range, the Department of Energy begs to differ.
They put out a statement of their own saying levels are “very low and well within the safe exposure range.” The professor’s measurements “exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency safety threshold by over 72 percent.”
The water samples he took from spots along the trail “contained radioactive measurements as high as 86 picocuries-per-liter” The EPA standard is below 50. “All four water samples exceed the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s relevant gross alpha standard.” That Ketterer declares, should “draw attention to an egregious water contamination problem mandating prompt EPA and/or State intervention.”
The birthplace of the #AtomicBomb is back in the news. A watchdog group is raising new concerns about legacy plutonium contamination in #LosAlamos' Acid Canyon in New Mexico.https://t.co/akDwmvy7ST pic.twitter.com/8R8Q1MuNvM
— Public News Service (@PNS_News) August 23, 2024
Local wildlife is in even more danger than humans in the area. “High concentrations of plutonium in the canyon’s water posed wider environmental risks to communities and habitats downstream.” Plutonium in ground water “can also be absorbed by plants where it enter the food chain via local veggie-eating herbivores, or spread as airborne ash following increasingly common wildfires.”
When the monsoon season rolls around, storm conditions cause “plutonium laden water and sediment” to flow “through Acid Canyon and into Los Alamos Canyon and ultimately, the Rio Grande.”
You can expect Kamala Harris to do something about it because of that. We can’t have poor asylum seeking border jumpers getting cancer when they wetback their way across the radioactive Rio Grande.
