When Donna Welch and her husband moved from Macon to the “dream home” they built in Juliette a decade ago, they were lured by the beautiful country setting in the woods, far from city pollution.
But contamination reached them anyway, delivered in the form of sweet-tasting glasses of well water.
The Welches learned this year that their well is contaminated with the radioactive metal uranium, as well as radon, a gas produced when uranium decays.
Ingesting uranium can cause kidney dysfunction over time, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Airborne radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer -- and the leading cause among nonsmokers, the EPA says.
“You’re so at peace and love your home, and to find out that there’s some potential evidence that something invisible is harming you. ... It’s so insidious,” Welch said, shaking her head as she stood in her yard on a breezy fall day last week.
Seeking the cause of unexplained liver problems and loss of sensation in her feet, Welch had her water tested this summer. When someone from the University of Georgia lab called to tell her the results -- 21 times the safe limit -- he told her to immediately stop drinking or cooking with it.
“I was drinking 100 ounces of water a day,” she said. “It freaked me out. I could just hardly believe it.”
Her family is not alone. Twenty-two of 400 Monroe County residents who tested their well water for uranium found more than the EPA deems safe, said Dana Lynch, a county cooperative extension agent.
But state and federal environmental and public health officials are warning that this is not just a Monroe County problem. Uranium occurs naturally beneath the granite layer throughout the Piedmont in Georgia and other Southern states. That means anyone with a deep drilled well -- generally, more than 100 feet deep -- north of the Fall Line has a higher risk of uranium or radon in their water. They also have a higher likelihood of radon in the air inside their home.
But until Monroe County residents began testing their water last year, very few people were aware of the risk.
“Monroe County is the only one that’s done anything,” Lynch said. “We want health departments or extension offices in other counties to get the word out. The more testing you have, the better you can understand how serious the issue is.”
Homeowners decide to test
Delores Worley said she and her husband, Jamie, were the first in Monroe County to test their water for uranium, after her doctor suggested it. “It was twice the EPA allowance,” Worley said, and her hair tissue analysis showed extremely high uranium, too.
First, her family put in a filtration system at their pump house, then later hooked onto county water that was already available.
In the meantime, Jamie Worley was diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer and died in May. Delores said his job as an engineer likely put him in contact with other pollutants, but she believes the uranium in their water contributed to the total load of contamination that eventually overwhelmed his liver.
Welch’s family also had their hair tested for uranium.
“It was off the charts,” she said. She wasn’t so surprised about her results, but her 17-year-old daughter’s shocked her.
“When I opened my daughter’s results, I sat in the driveway and cried,” Welch said. “The test results confirm in my mind it was not a silly little thing not to worry about.”
Welch said some people don’t want to test their wells because they are concerned about the effect of contamination on their property values. But she is urging residents to test, especially women who are pregnant and people with young children. She wants the health department or cooperative extension office to mail all residents a letter encouraging them to test their wells.
There are no current plans to do so. But officials with the North Central Health District and the University of Georgia say all well owners should have their wells tested for biological contamination every year and mineral contamination every two or three years. The UGA Cooperative Extension also encourages all homeowners to test the air for radon.
Carla Coley, environmental director for the North Central Health District, said the occurrence of uranium in Monroe County is similar to the statewide rate and that of Piedmont regions in other states.
“I think it’s been made out that this is an unusual, alarmingly high rate, but it’s not,” she said, adding that the rate of fecal coliform contamination in private wells is more than twice as high and generally poses a larger threat.
But it is hard to draw conclusions about how widespread uranium contamination is, because so few wells have been tested. Statewide, only 25 homeowners outside of Monroe County have tested their well water for uranium, Lynch said. Outside Monroe, homeowners in counties such as Pike, Troup, Oglethorpe and Greene found unsafe levels of uranium in their water, too, she said.
“It’s a Piedmont issue,” said Robert Olive, who’s in the EPA’s groundwater and safe drinking water enforcement section. “If you are a private well owner, it is a good idea to get your well tested. If it is a high result, there’s reason to be concerned, but it’s not a panic situation.”
EPA officials and uranium experts will be at the Monroe County Commission meeting tonight at 6 p.m., and Anita Buice, the Monroe County administrator, encouraged residents with uranium and radon problems to attend. The commissioners meet in the Conference room of the County Annex Building at 38 W. Main St. in Forsyth.
Cooperative extension workers began holding Monroe County workshops on uranium and radon in the spring, with the next one planned for Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at the First Baptist Church of High Falls, 4408 High Falls Road. Lynch plans to hold another one in Culloden soon.
“Most of the time people don’t test their wells for anything until something tastes funny,” Lynch said. “But uranium has no taste or smell.” She added that as residential and industrial growth have increased demand on underground aquifers, homeowners are having to go deeper to reach a reliable water supply -- and are more likely to hit uranium.
Equipment can be installed to filter water or fan radon gas out of the home, but only if the problem is known. Cooperative extension offers low-cost radon test kits and uranium water testing.
Scope of the problem
In Monroe County, 50 tests showed some level of uranium in the water, with 22 exceeding the EPA allowable standard of 30 parts per billion, Lynch said. Three were in the 300 to 400 parts-per-billion range -- and one was 1,500 parts per billion, she said.
“If uranium is above 30 parts per billion, I suggest they stop drinking their water and maybe even see a physician,” Lynch said.
Although the higher levels are somewhat more common in the southeast corner of Monroe County, they aren’t all clustered in one spot, and in many cases neighbors didn’t have similar results.
The University of Georgia can’t share individual results, even with elected officials. Monroe County commissioners want to try to help residents with contaminated water, but they need residents to contact the county to identify themselves, Buice said.
“Our problem is, we don’t know the scope,” she said. “We’re trying to use our resources to see what funding is available, either for us to extend our water system or for filters for private homes.” County water all comes from surface water rather than wells, Buice said.
Lynch said she recommends that homeowners who find elevated uranium in their water also test for radon.
Drinking high amounts of radon in water can increase stomach cancer risk, said Becky Chenhall, a UGA radon educator. But a higher risk is radon’s ability to evaporate and become breathable radon gas when residents shower or wash clothes. In Georgia, an average of one in 15 radon air tests will be higher than the safe level, Chenhall said.
The Welches found radon in their water at almost 20 times the safe limit. A detailed air test showed this causes airborne radon levels to spike every time the family washes a load of laundry.
The combination and severity of the Welches’ problem means it could cost from $5,300 to $7,800 to fix, Welch estimated. She’d like access to county water but finds it unlikely to happen soon.
Some residents, such as Kay King of Pate Road, found no uranium in their water, but they have radon in the air of their homes.
“Everybody should test for radon, no matter what,” said King, who now plans to test her water for radon, too.
To contact writer S. Heather Duncan, call 744-4225.
