Charles Bland said his tap water was brown, and he wanted to know if that meant it had a high level of radium.
George Petronis said he'd been paying for contaminated water for years, and asked bitterly if he would be asked to pay more for untainted water.
One after another, Pemberton Township residents filed to the front of the council room at a recent meeting to express anger over the disclosure that the Burlington County town's water supply had shown elevated radium levels for most of 2009.
"I didn't know until I got a postcard in the mail," Bland, a 75-year-old Army veteran, said later. "I was scared to death. I've been asking my neighbors because the township hasn't told us much of anything."
After months of negotiations, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has fined Pemberton $4,500 for failing to properly notify state officials and the public of elevated radium levels in one of its wells.
The case is not unusual: Seven other municipal water systems in the state are under the supervision of DEP for radium monitoring violations. And while radium scares are less common since 2002, when 23 municipal water authorities discovered they were over federal limits - the result of a change in testing procedure to catch an isotope with an especially short half-life - radium remains a persistent threat to South Jersey's water supply despite increased regulation, said Karen Fell, a bureau chief for safe drinking water with DEP.
"It's not like radium comes from a man-made system. It's spotty and it can be a function of the pumping rate of any one given well," she said. "The water systems try to get it all right, but there are increasing regulations."
A naturally occurring substance, radium derives from the breakdown of underground deposits of uranium and thorium. Far more radioactive than the substances it derives from, radium, even in small amounts, is believed to elevate the long-term risk for cancer if exposure is prolonged.
"All natural water supplies have a certain amount of radium in them, but the question is in what quantity," said Edward Christman, assistant professor of public health at Columbia University. "There's an increased possibility of getting radiogenic cancer later in life. It's a risk that's elevated by everything we're exposed to. This just adds to the pack."
New Jersey is one of several parts of the country known for its high levels of radium, Christman said.
