[Image description: paper cutouts hung on a fridge, including hands in various gestures, hats, and a man’s face with a word bubble “Only you can prevent people from drinking 3 gallons of water daily from a groundwater monitoring well above MCLs to change their chances of getting cancer to greater than one in a million!!”]

  • thrawn@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    Ahahah, well I appreciate the solidarity!

    “MCLs” are maximum contaminant limits, which are numbers established in California to regulate chemicals and other pollutant levels in groundwater.

    Often times we do risk calculations to see if the level of contamination at a site would increase the chance of developing cancer for exposed groups. Greater than one in a million is a common threshold that triggers use restrictions, oversight or cleanup.

    Another part of the joke is that we don’t get our drinking water from groundwater monitoring wells. As their name implies, they’re literally there to keep an eye on things, and most often installed in places that we already know or suspect are contaminated.

    • totallynotarobot@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Ha! Love this.

      I’m picturing someone sneaking into a ground monitoring well and running an illicit hose to their off the grid home, but it’s yogi bear like he’s stealing a pic-a-nic basket.

      • thrawn@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 year ago

        Hah! I shall confess I’ve squirreled away the knowledge of the locations of the rare really clean wells I’ve seen. When the zombie apocalypse comes, I know where to get the good stuff 😜