[ RadSafe ] CRT monitor radiation "scare" at Newark airport

Tue Dec 21 17:16:28 CST 2010

Just speculating, and nothing more:

It might be that they wanted to look more closely at a CRT that someone was transporting, and "radiation" is a piece of disinformation.  As a lot of people have asked, "Why would anyone fly with a CRT?"  There may be a good answer for a particular CRT, but it doesn't make any more sense than shipping a couple of toner cartridges from the Middle East to the US.  I would take it as a good sign if the security people are looking more closely at things that strike them as "not right".  

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of ZIC Joe -PICKERING
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2010 10:46 AM
To: 'The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List'
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] CRT monitor radiation "scare" at Newark airport

All,

We had similar issues when we were releasing a number of our old CRT screens (HP, Dell, etc...) from our nuclear sites during the mass transfer to LCDs.  The majority of screens would alarm our Small / Large Article Monitors at anywhere from 10 to 100 nCi (monitors calibrated to Cs-137).  Gamma Spectroscopy identified the cause of the alarms to be due to Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM) in the screens (i.e. Th-daughters and K-40).

Don't know why someone was taking a CRT on a plane?  I would pay $200 for a new screen just so that I wouldn't have to lug one of these along on my trip...

Josip Zic   M.Sc, CHP
Health Physicist
Ontario Power Generation

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at agni.phys.iit.edu [mailto:radsafe-bounces at agni.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Jim Hardeman
Sent: Monday, December 20, 2010 6:10 PM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] CRT monitor radiation "scare" at Newark airport

Colleagues --

Looking back, I found an article in the HP Journal from 2004 regarding the presence of uranium, thorium and potassium-40 in CRTs.

The article documents a number of radiation measurements on the glass of (then) modern CRTs such as NEC MultiSync 4- and 5- series, Dell Trinitron, etc. using a handheld GM counter with a pancake probe, with results in the 100-200 cpm net range per probe area. The authors indicate that most of the radioactivity was from K-40. In the words of the authors, "[t]hese levels are sufficiently elevated that new, unused and uncontaminated monitors would not qualify for unconditional release from a Contamination Area under standard survey procedures for release of radioactive material."

Given the propensity of security personnel to carry what I would refer to as "gnat's ass" counters that alarm not at a specific radiation level but rather at a specified number of standard deviations above background (most that I see are set to alarm at 6-sigma) I don't find it at all odd that airport security folks might have gotten a little worked up over this. Depending on the instrument they used, they might have also gotten a "high-energy" alarm (due to the 1460 keV gamma from K-40) and they've been trained that high-energy alarms could be indicators of industrial sources that could be used in constructing an RDD. 

Perhaps my colleagues with the State of New Jersey could enlighten us all as to their interactions with the security folks at the Newark airport.

My $0.02 only ...

Jim Hardeman
Georgia Environmental Protection Division

>>> "Strickert, Rick" <rstrickert at signaturescience.com> 12/20/2010 17:39 >>>
In releasing a statement that "computer monitors normally emit small amounts of radiation," could it be that some FBI or airport agent quickly looked up Wikipedia's section on "Cathode Ray Tube - Ionizing radiation" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube#Ionizing_radiation) and paraphrased the information to waiting journalists, who may have also checked Wikipedia to confirm what they were told?

In checking the news stories (676 so far) which I read (significantly less than 676) about the FBI statement that the radiation was "normal for this device," none of the new reports raised the question of what that measured radiation level was and in what units.

It's like sheeple nodding in agreement when a politician claims his plan will raise some  education/health/job satisfaction level of everyone to above the average.

Rick Strickert
Austin, TX

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