In addition to some sense of the scale of the "radiation", what type(s) of radiation were measured? At what elevation vs ground?
Hello Steve,
It is a work in progress. The final paper will have all of those things in it as the progression through the data and analysis happen.
The research paper regarding making maps of outdoor background radiation has been posted now.
I've read it fast and casually just for the gist. Sounds like there were a lot of good, standard, industrial grade screwups. That's quite normal. Sigh.
I didn't see any numbers that would give cause for concern for health.
The hypothesis about radionucleides following the traffic density patterns remains open, do you think? The hypothesis that micro-scale radiation levels would show contrast, seems fairly well answered in the negative, at least for the North Saanich area.
The levels were so low that there was statistical noise blotting out minor components to the background, I think.
The fact that you have patterns at all is interesting. I didn't read close enough yet to get any sense of magnitude or cause.
What's next for you?
Thanks for your feedback. It is great.
There should be no cause of health concerns. The local values are very low for background in the area. I would like to go back and try to reproduce values or get better measures at all the points to verify or disprove.
The use of the Saanich area was specifically because of low normal values.
The selection of the CR-39 type ATDs for long term measures was not the best in this case. The budget was low and there were just over 90 days to have them in the field due to writing deadlines. I may redo some stations with a couple different sensors and the remaining ATDs I have in stock.
The overall goal was to map low outdoor radiation pattern variations. A more sensitive meter would improve things a bit. I thought maybe some XRF sampling of the point locations would also be informative.
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