Maine has one of the highest counts of uranium in its bedrock in the entire United States, but ironically few people, including Lincoln County residents, bother to have their wells tested for it or its byproducts of radium and radon.

Water quality testing labs and companies that mitigate undesirable hazardous contents interviewed for this article hesitate to sound an alarm about the issue. However, they do want to raise public awareness enough so that people will test for radiation elements and arsenic, of which Maine has a high level in its well water.

"What they don't know won't hurt them," Ed Young, Jr. of Water Treatment Equipment of Yarmouth said about many residents' attitude toward testing. Young's company does mitigation while other companies do the testing.

Unless people have public water supplies like Damariscotta, Waldoboro, and Wiscasset, Young and other people associated with water quality advise them to do it, usually at a cost as low as $20-35 for the uranium testing.

According to John Dyer of A & L Lab of Auburn, which only does testing; "Maine has some of the highest counts in the world."

The problem he and others in the business find is people ordinarily think of radon seeping up from cracks in foundations and more commonly test for it mostly at the time of real estate transfers.

There are quite a few hot spots for radon in Lincoln County, including Wiscasset, Nobleboro, Alna, and Jefferson, according to Dyer.

"Most places in Maine do not typically test for it. About the only time they do is when they buy and sell a house," said Mike Gelberg of Air & Water Quality of Freeport, a company that mitigates various impurities from water. Gelberg said Maine has a high count of alpha particles (radioactivity) in its water averaging 6.8 picocuries per liter of water (units of measurement for radioactive elements) compared to an average 1.5 picocuries per liter for the entire United States.

"Four is the limit," he said. "Very few labs do testing for uranium, but it should be part of standard tests." The cost of uranium testing is usually $20-35 while standard tests for mineral and bacteria content cost about $60.

Gelberg advises people to do the uranium testing as an important consideration, especially since it is a class A carcinogen. His and other companies like his do mitigation through a filtration process called "reverse osmosis" costing $2000-5000.

"It's hard to get people to move on something they're going to have to spend money on," he said. "They're not going to find a problem unless they test," he said.

Levels should be less than 4 picocuries according to state Dept. of Environmental Protection Agency standards, but Gelberg said his company had to deal recently with a level of 400 picocuries in West Alna.

"It can be fixed," he said. "That's the good news."

Professionals in the water quality business like Gelberg take a different stance than the ordinary citizen. The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, to name one watchdog group, advises homeowners to test for arsenic, radon, uranium, lead (first draw test), and fluoride every three to five years in addition to yearly tests for bacteria, nitrates, and nitrites.

Lead does not come from the well itself but most likely from the plumbing. Old houses had lead pipes, but then later solder containing lead was in use on copper plumbing until 1986. Ed Young said that modern faucet fixtures still contain lead, though, which means people should run their water for 30 seconds or so before using it for drinking.

A lot of radon, which is a gas, gets into homes through water supplies. It comes from drilled or artesian wells mainly, since they go down into the bedrock. Dug wells are less likely to have any uranium levels because they do not go down to bedrock levels although they potentially contain higher coliform bacteria counts, according to water quality people contacted.

Young explained that radon gets into the air from the well water when agitated in washing machines, dishwashers, and showers. In older homes where the air exchange is better, radon does get released to the outside, but new homes have more limited exchange.

The gas also seeps up through cracks in foundations and slabs. For both cases, mitigation of air can piped outside, however. "Older houses are better from a breathing point of view," he said.

Young said there are high levels of radon in Lincoln County, but just because one home has a high level of its does not mean a next-door neighbor is going to have a high level.

John Dyer said 10 years ago people did not test for arsenic very much and most likely did not conduct periodic tests to catch any change. It has only been within the past couple of years that more people have begun to test for uranium, radium, and radon.

"When you go for mitigation, you should test for both water and air," he said.

Towns do not require such testing, but some Lincoln County towns do periodic testing for contents other than uranium, radium, and radon. The reason for that is the state Dept. of Environmental Protection typically requires towns with landfills to test wells in the vicinity annually. Nobleboro and Wiscasset are among them, but Damariscotta, which had a landfill does not.