[ RadSafe ] radon, lucas cells, earthquakes

[Brennan, Mike (DOH)]

Some years ago the safety officer of an underground coal mine (as opposed to open pit) contacted me about using radon to predict shifts in the rock that might mean a cave-in was about to occur.  There was interesting evident that this could have some predictive value, but there wasn't a way to collect the information in near-real time that used only spark-proof equipment.

-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu [mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Joseph Preisig
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2016 11:46 AM
To: radsafe
Subject: [ RadSafe ] radon, lucas cells, earthquakes

Radsafe,

     The recent email about Lucas Cells is fairly interesting.  I guess they allow one to get radon samples for counting without the presence of hot particles, other radionuclides etc.  Quite a while ago now I had a student job at the Jet Propulsion Lab and there was some interest in using radon as an earthquake precursor/predictor.  Someone left a stack of documents on my desk about radon and earthquake prediction.  Funny, how these documents somehow suddenly appear on one's desk.  Another time at BNL some mysterious person left me a copy of R. Grover Brown's Kalman Filtering book.  Mystery.

     The Chinese (mainland) have earthquake prediction interests using vp/vs ratio, precursory animal behavior (mice running up walls, horses busting out of corrals), radon, acoustic noise precursors, lights in the sky prior to earthquakes etc.  There is a nice American Geophysical Union book (a big blue book) on Earthquake Prediction by Simpson and Richards.
The elementary Earthquake book by Bruce Bolt also has a discussion of earthquake precursors.  Nance also wrote a popular book on earthquakes --- quite readable by the average guy.

    Radon is probably pretty useless for doing prediction of large/great subduction earthquakes.  But strike-slip events that are on land could probably produce interesting radon signals.  Perhaps some West Coast health physicists could collaborate with the folks at Caltech/JPL to instrument the San Andreas fault line somewhat.

    I see news reports that there is some sort of Cell-Phone APP that is somewhat sensitive to earthquake shaking.  Imagine giving a lecture in California when all of a sudden all the student's phones start giving an earthquake imminent signal.  Run for the doorway or outside???

     Joe Preisig
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