1 Gulf of Mexico, so you can get up to a thousand-fold increment in radium 



2 isotopes in the produced water. 



3 Again, there have been a few attempts to monitor this in terms of 



4 where it goes, and radium is fairly mobile in seawater. It doesn't seem 



5 to attach to particles too readily and there is very little signal 



6 beyond the discharge, so I don't know where it goes. Presumably, it is 



7 diluted out into the surface water. 



8 DR. AYERS: In the process of doing surveys, among other things, 



9 we've looked at produced water, but when we talk about radionuclides, we 



10 are looking at radium-226, lead-210-- 



11 DR. NEFF: And -228. 



12 DR. AYERS: Yes. The concern there is really again more of a 



13 marsh/on-shore, where the receiving body is small enough for the 



14 discharge. If the receiving body is larger than the discharge, then it 



15 disperses too fast for anything to happen. 



16 Also, again, even with the radionuclides in the marsh areas, you 



17 are still concerned principally not so much with external exposure, but 



18 we need to know more about those things are accumulating, bio- 



19 accumulating. 



20 DR. NEFF: Radium, being an alkaline metal, tends to be bone- 



21 seeking, so it is possible that bivalves and so forth and fish could 



22 accumulate it, but I've never seen any evidence that that occurs. 



23 That's where you would expect to see it. 



24 DR. AYERS: One of the things that ought to be under consideration 



25 here, EPA is, again, working on the off-shore guidelines for mud and 



26 produced water. Even that should be done by the time anybody would 



27 ever--you know, it's only taken them about 15 years or something, but 



28 they are still going to finish before anybody would ever put a platform 



29 in. 



30 There is a lot more information that is being developed about 



31 produced water. Certainly, there is nothing that we know today that 



32 would make us feel like we've got any emergency situation or anything 



33 alarming. 



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