[ RadSafe ] Radioactive coffee? .....NORM ?

[Geo>K0FF]

I went to the local coffee emporium today armed with a Neutron RAE pocket 
Gamma/Neutron scintillator.
Scanned bins of coffee beans from Columbia, Costa Rica, Africa and some juts 
marked "Latin America".

None of the bins of beans raised the counter above nominal background, which 
was 4 uR/H at that location.
None of the ground coffee from anywhere did either.Nil.

Usually I would have backed up these tests with a pancake probe to look for 
alpha and beta particles, but all the samples were shielded.

The pocket scintillator has proved exceptionally effective at detecting 
small quantities of NORM for me in the past.

Earlier in this day at a fossil show, it detected any number of fossils that 
had NORM in them. A number of
paleontologists are using Gamma detectors to prospect for fossils now. More 
on this another time.


George Dowell
NLNL
New London Nucleonics Lab
GEOelectronics at netscape.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jaro" <jaro-10kbq at sympatico.ca>
To: "RADSAFE" <radsafe at radlab.nl>
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2007 5:30 PM
Subject: [ RadSafe ] Radioactive coffee? .....NORM ?


Would anyone happen to know what NORM there might be in coffee beans, to 
increase their GM count rate to several times background ? .....such is the 
result obtained by a friend with various coffees, in different towns.

Could wood ash fertilizer be responsible ? (plant uptake or soil 
contamination of beans ?)
Or perhaps Brazil's Monazite ?

Thanks in advance.


Jaro
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^