Safety in Radiation Detection

Familiarity with your Geiger counter includes awareness of safe use. We've listed some sources where you can find best practices for safe radiation detection below.

BLOG: Measuring hot particles from air filters, guest blog by Marco Kaltofen, June 24, 2011, offers cautions and attaches an informative sampling guide for an air filters study. It focuses on sampling rules, various grades of filtering masks, bagging, labeling, shipping to laboratory of radioactive samples. Among Marco’s cautions relevant to radiation monitoring are the following:

Remember that radioactive dusts can be inhaled, ingested, or can be retained on clothing and shoes. You can walk away from external radiation, but radioactive dust may result in lifelong exposures !

Do not use tobacco, eat, or drink while sampling. This reduces the chances of ingesting radioactive dusts.

When sampling, wear long sleeved shirts, trousers, and shoes that cover your feet – no sandals.

Use disposable gloves while sampling to reduce cross contamination between samples, and to reduce your exposure to dusts.

Do not bring contaminated samples, used masks and gloves, or dusty clothing into clean environments. Bag your dusty used gear before entering your vehicle or home.

Wash hands or better yet, shower, after leaving the field.

FAQ What is Safe?** in Safecast Radiation Specific FAQ:

Short answer: Good question.

Long answer: Unfortunately there is very little agreement within the health physics world about what is safe and what is unsafe. While there are some things that are generally agreed upon, children and pregnant women are at greater risk for example, there is no clear measurement that is the cut off point for safe or not. What’s most important is being aware of what you are exposed to, and what others are exposed to so you can decide if that is acceptable or not. The matter is very complex because risk factors are very different for individual people based on age, existing health issues, exposure time, areas of exposure, etc… therefore risk is best gauged on an individual basis and not generalized to the entire population.

One caveat: Individual comfort levels should not be discounted, and different people will be more or less comfortable with various levels.

IN EARLY BLOG, Jun 2, 2011, Farm readings in Hanawa near Shirakawa, it was stated that “100 counts per minute, equivalent to approximately 0.3 microSieverts per hour, above background level is considered contaminated.” (Background being the natural and previously contaminated level?)

ADVICE IN HELP FILE Nick Dolezal in his Geiger Bot app docs brings this caution:

• WARNING! The indicators and dose equivalent rate displayed by Geiger Bot are not a guarantee of safety. There are types of radiation that are difficult to measure with standard GM tubes (alpha, soft beta, neutron, soft x-ray, etc). The greatest risk to your health is likely from ingesting or inhaling radioisotopes, and a gross radiation background count cannot directly measure that.

It is also very difficult to detect contamination in food or drink, and is usually something done by a laboratory scintillation counter with chemically processed samples.

ADVICE IN DISCUSSION GROUP THREAD A good example of a lengthy, quality explanation of radiation safety and safe use, see Kalin’s thread begun 26 Jan 2013, Radiation safety: educated guess.

”High zone is not for novice, but requires training…”

VIDEO: for example see video on radiation absorption filtering methods: The Safecast team members wear work overalls (not their ordinary clothing). Reportedly they have backup hazmat gear in the car. Their approach is serious, respectful and careful around higher readings on varnished rain-soaked wood bench. (This can be contrasted with whbat appears to be a cavalier, casual approach to explore "maxed-out" hot ant-hill near Chernobyl)

RECOMMENDED SAFETY LINKS: here's example of a link given in the devices group, a recommended starter, the "Guide to the safe handling of radioactive materials in research", a manual on radiological safety practices by the Perkin Elmer Co.

Respirator Fact Sheet at National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory (CDC/NPPTL)

Safety notes: How can I find out the relative danger from these readings to put some perspective on to them? --

Get a degree in nuclear engineering, LoL . Really it is a very difficult question that we avoid to answer directly. For a "starter" and a longish answer see: Google good readable safety orientation: http://shop.perkinelmer.com/content/manuals/gde_safehandlingradioactivematerials.pdf

The web has endless information on safe use of radiation detection devices. Find your own favorite safety page. Share your information and experience with others

Avoid radiation hazards that can be avoided. If you find some high hot sample or field – USE YOUR HEAD AND YOUR NANO. Don't touch it or hold it directly. Back off. Walk away. Monitor everything. Especially spot read yourself. Did you, your belongings, your shoes pick up contamination? Don’t track it with you into your house. Be especially careful with food. Avoid ingestion of radiation. For example, if you have open leafy vegetables from market which rested or contacted the hot spot or matter’s dusty vicinity, use the nano to spot check the food for possible contamination. If in doubt, throw it out. And don’t take food along, don’t mix food with monitoring -- as written in Marco’s rules. Wash your hands. (This is not paranoia, but rational, resilient, good practice.)

“If an instrument indicates an unexpectedly high dose rate, believe it and leave the area as soon as possible. Do not assume that it is an instrument failure. (Only once away from the high dose rate area should the instrument functionality be assessed.)” -- from http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/irp7.pdf

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Nano catch-all landing page http://blog.safecast.org/bgeigie-nano/.

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SAFE RADIATION DETECTION STORIES

(Please share your advice and links above and add your practice story here.)

yw - Many Nano users probably will not find any notable radiation. But you never know. You might stumble upon a notably high sample, such as my report on an antique radium kit c.1904, entry July 18 in devices thread entitled Suggestions for a good source of radiation to check the functionality. If you high score the Nano on first use, you can return the game console for full refund and prize. Congratulations! --Ah, the bGeigie Nano is not a toy. Safecast is not an internet game. There is a real need to learn and teach radiation safety and share data.

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