Radioactive pollutants have contaminated crops and livestock in the Wonderfonteinspruit area southwest of Johannesburg, and physicists have warned of severe health impacts.
According to German physicist Dr Rainer Barthel of BS Associates Ltd, meat, fish, milk, maize and other crops irrigated with water from the catchment areas near the Wonderfonteinspruit are so severely affected that they could cause liver or kidney failure and cancer in humans who consume them. They could also hamper children’s growth and cause mental disability. T he Wonderfonteinspruit catchment area (WCA) includes the eastern catchments of the Mooi River and covers parts of the extended goldfields in the Witwatersrand basin. The radioactive contamination of surface-water bodies in the WCA caused by long-term discharge of mine water was the subject of a comprehensive radiological risk assessment performed on behalf of the National Nuclear Regulator (NNR). report is known as the Brenk Report. Barthel was prevented at short notice from delivering two speeches based on the report at the Environmin 2007 conference in the Pilanesberg Nature Reserve three weeks ago. But in an abstract article published for the conference, Barthel stated, “Cattle watering with surface water … or with water from mine-water discharge canals is common practice in the WCA. It presents a well-known scenario of radiological risk assessment. When cattle tread the water body for drinking, the water becomes completely turbid because sediment is churned up. This may cause much more uptake of radioactivity with the suspended particulate matter,” he said. It is believed the meat and milk of such cattle would probably also be poisonous.
But the NNR has repudiated claims that the water in the area is unsafe. “There is no reason for concern,” said chief official Maurice Magugumela, adding that the was studying the report and had had “several talks with those involved”. his is despite the Brenk Report’s finding that no natural water in the whole area was safe for use by humans, animals or plants. A ccording to media reports the West Rand district municipality planned to erect warning notices along the Wonderfonteinspruit, but Tlokwe (Potchefstroom) City Council spokesperson Kaizer Mohau said recently that the water sources were monitored weekly and the water was “totally safe” for human consumption. H owever, experts and the general community feel there is plenty of evidence that the toxicity of the Wonderfonteinspruit water constitutes a hazard and a threat to human health. – Cornelia du Plooy
