Radioactive Water Threatens Middle East

[questionmark]

The Middle East and North Africa suffer from water shortages and pump millions of liters a day from ancient aquifers. But the water contains high levels of naturally-occurring radioactive contamination. Experts fear this will increase the cancer risk for millions of people

True masters of water management once lived in the desert of what is now Jordan. It took the Nabataeans only a few decades to carve the city of Petra out of sandstone cliffs. In addition to crafting now world-famous decorative tomb facades, they built a sophisticated system of water pipes and cisterns, which made it possible for the city to exist in the dry wilderness in the first place -- more than 2,000 years ago.

Today trucks rumble through Jordan to supply the population with drinking water. The water sloshing back and forth in their tanks is often thousands of years old, pumped from fossil groundwater reservoirs that filled up when the region wasn't as dry. Millions of cubic meters of water are now being pumped from such aquifers every day in the Middle East and North Africa. The next hydraulic engineering project is currently underway in Jordan, at a cost of $1.1 billion (€850 million). Starting in the spring of 2013, about 100 million cubic meters a year will be pumped out of the Disi aquifer in the country's south, in addition to the 60 million cubic meters a year already being taken from the aquifer today. The water will then be pumped through pipelines to the capital Amman, some 325 kilometers (203 miles) away.

Read more

[Insaniac]

Thank you, for reminding me that everyone is *******.

Seriously, it's like every day theres a new threat to Humanity's survival. Now theres a possibility that Cancer will rear it's ugly head once again.

Thanks for the heads up, OP.

[Ashotep]

What's going to happen when the aquifers all over the world dry up from over use. There are places here in the US the land is sinking because the water in the aquifers are low, wonder if they contain radiation. Yet some keep having too many kids. This planet can't support any more people. It's having a hard time with the people that is already here.

Anymore when someone tells me they plan on having 6 or more kids I feel like telling them your nuts. I have no respect for them because they are only thinking about themselves not the kind of world these kids are going to get because of over population.

Edited November 5, 2012 by Hilander

[Bavarian Raven]

Anymore when someone tells me they plan on having 6 or more kids I feel like telling them your nuts. I have no respect for them because they are only thinking about themselves not the kind of world these kids are going to get because of over population.

Or they're smart - because after the massive population collapse we will reach a new population equilibrium and said people with 6 or more kids will more likely to have their gene pool survive So from a purely survival point of view, it is smart.

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

China might actually have the right idea - one or two children maximum (with exceptions for naturally occurring multiple births obviously). If every couple has two children then that's a stability of sorts, no increase no decrease in populations.

[Black Red Devil]

Maybe they should opt for the recycled water solution which comes from sewage and subsequently gets treated and removed of all pollutants (so they say).