[ RadSafe ] Fwd: Alleged Significant rise in ionising radiation in atmosphere over Southern California

[Dan McCarn]

Dear Mike & David:

I'd like to advance one plausible hypothesis regarding elevated levels of
alpha radiation over California:

Some years ago, I had the pleasure of working on the geology / geochemistry
of the Piceance Basin in NW Colorado. As I became more knowledgeable about
the basin, it became apparent that the depositional systems of the oil
shale (keragenous dolomitic marlstone) were strongly influenced by dusts
being blown off the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin and the basins of
California. In fact, much of the fertility of the Colorado Plateau has been
attributed to dusts being entrained in the soil column originating from
California. In the Piceance Basin, the "richness" or Leanness" of the oil
shale zones are postulated to be caused by the changing volume of dust
being blown into the basin and is strongly influences by climate - drier &
wetter conditions - spanning the lifetime of the active basin. The drier
conditions result in larger amounts of deposited dusts and thicker annual
accumulations of oil shale; the wetter conditions provide less suspended
dust and leaner oil shale accumulations.

Fertile soils accumulate plant nutrients such as phosphates and other
micronutrients. In order to grow commercially, California soils are also
heavily artificially augmented with these nutrients. Phosphate fertilizers
contain significant amounts of radium, uranium and other progeny in the
uranium series. During dry periods, these enriched soils deflate in winds &
dry conditions and are aerially suspended as fine particulates. I think
this is why there is such a change in alpha activity since the windblown
dusts are deriving their radiation from phosphate-enriched soils.

This is not unique to the California basins. The Amazon appears to be
sustained by phosphate-bearing dusts blown from Africa.
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100809/full/news.2010.396.html

Best!

Dan ii

Dan W McCarn, Geologist
108 Sherwood Blvd
Los Alamos, NM 87544-3425
+1-505-672-2014 (Home – New Mexico)
+1-505-670-8123 (Mobile - New Mexico)
HotGreenChile at gmail.com (Private email) HotGreenChile at gmail dot com

On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 8:22 AM, David & Laura <davidandlaura at lambertlake.ca>
wrote:

> We live in the San Fernando Valley, and background radiation monitoring is
> one of our hobbies. When the atmospheric plume from Fukushima blew over, we
> measured a 3x increase in gamma for a few days (from 0.6 - 0.8 uS
> background to >3 uS) before returning back to normal background levels. So
> these sorts of changes certainly can be measured with basic equipment, if
> operated according to best practices. Of course, attributing the
> measurements to specific causes and sources is much more fraught with
> difficulty.
>
> One thing to keep in mind is that the San Fernando Valley is immediately to
> the west of the former Santa Suzana Field Laboratory, which is a major
> local source of nuclear contaminants:
>
> http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-20140613-column.html
> http://yosemite.epa.gov/r9/sfund/r9sfdocw.nsf/ViewByEPAID/CAN000908498
>
> Walking around the area near our home, we often see hotspots much higher in
> background levels, so during windy periods when lots of dust is mobilized,
> it certainly is very plausible that measurements of air filters would read
> higher rates.
>
> Thanks,
>
> David Slik
> VE7FIM
>
> On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 6:51 AM, Brennan, Mike (DOH) <
> Mike.Brennan at doh.wa.gov
> > wrote:
>
> > By defining "background" as a clean filter (not unreasonable) I can think
> > of several ways of getting the "over 300%" of background.  The easiest
> > would be to count a filter as soon as it came off the sampler.  Another
> is
> > to choose a sampling period with som moisture in the air, as it makes
> > things stick to the filter.  Sampling during a temperature inversion also
> > works.  Or you can "accidently" misrecord the time, so you have a greater
> > actual volume than your calculations show.
> > ________________________________________
> > From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu [
> > radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] on behalf of Chris Alston [
> > achris1999 at gmail.com]
> > Sent: Thursday, June 04, 2015 6:38 AM
> > To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
> > Subject: [ RadSafe ] Fwd: Alleged Significant rise in ionising radiation
> > in atmosphere over Southern California
> >
> > Radon daughters?  Weird "stuff" can happen.  When atmospheric conditions
> > were just so, I have seen, e.g., metallic objects, like cars, read to
> > dozens of counts per minute alpha, which then vanishes in a few hours.
> >
> > Cheers
> > cja
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Roger Helbig <rwhelbig at gmail.com>
> > Date: Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 5:36 AM
> > Subject: [ RadSafe ] Alleged Significant rise in ionising radiation in
> > atmosphere over Southern California
> > To: RADSAFE <radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu>
> > See
> >
> >
> http://www.enviroreporter.com/2015/06/alpha-radiation-clouds-los-angeles-air/
> > for the actual report, also look at the About page - these readings
> > are being taken by Michael Collins and he may not really know what he
> > is doing, but claim to know everything.
> > Roger Helbig
> > _______________________________________________
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