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In a Sign of the Times, the City Begins Deploying Radiation Detectors
Index:
In a Sign of the Times, the City Begins Deploying Radiation Detectors
Loads of Radioactive Berries Seized
Lieberman Recommends Technology Agency
Me and My Geiger Counter
==========================================
In a Sign of the Times, the City Begins Deploying Radiation Detectors
NY Times June 29 - As a part of the Police Department's new measures
to guard against potential terrorism, radiation detectors will be
installed outside several city buildings, Police Commissioner Raymond
W. Kelly said yesterday. City Hall will probably be among the
locations, he said.
The police department installed one of four of the new portable
detectors outside police headquarters in Lower Manhattan on Thursday,
and officials said another would be set up outside the building's
garage. The department's bomb squad and its emergency services unit
will use two others.
"There will be those sorts of devices in other city buildings, when
and where I can't tell you specifically, but clearly that is the goal
of the city administration," Mr. Kelly said, adding that City Hall
would probably get one.
The devices, which cost about $11,000 each, could help spot a so-
called dirty bomb, a conventional explosive wrapped in radioactive
material.
Such detectors, according to one official familiar with their use,
are already used in Washington, outside the White House and the
Capitol.
Yesterday, at 1 Police Plaza, some police officers, officials and
visitors passed through the unobtrusive detector unperturbed, but
others took notice. "It's kind of scary it's a little too close for
comfort," one officer said.
But Mr. Kelly said prudence demanded the use of the devices, each of
which are anchored by a pair of black cylinders about 7 feet tall and
3 inches in diameter.
Several other officials in New York and Washington agreed with Mr.
Kelly.
"I think the kind of vigilance the Police Department is using is
right on target," Jerome M. Hauer, the director of the federal Office
of Public Health Preparedness at the Department of Health and Human
Services, said in a telephone interview. "As we continue to have
heightened concerns about potential threats in this country, I think
it's important to look at critical facilities like police
headquarters and use the best available technology to protect them."
Mr. Hauer, who was the director of the city's Office of Emergency
Management from 1996 to 2000 under Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, said,
"We have to be concerned about unconventional weapons, particularly
one that is not necessarily a weapon of mass destruction, but
certainly a dirty bomb is a weapon of mass disruption because of the
anxiety it creates."
He said such a bomb could sow panic by spewing radioactive material
and contaminating an area of several square blocks.
Police officials have said that the radiation detectors were bought
as a precautionary measure and that there had been no specific
threats that prompted their installation.
The devices, manufactured by a Longmont, Colo., company called TSA
Systems Ltd. and sold by Saint-Gobain Crystals and Detectors in
Solon, Ohio, were originally designed for use at nuclear power plants
and other nuclear facilities in case of accident, said Charlie
Schnurr, vice president of TSA Systems. The federal Emergency
Management Agency, in conjunction with the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, required the installations, Mr. Schnurr said.
The detectors can be set up in just minutes and weigh 90 pounds each,
according to TSA's product information. They can be packed up into a
storage bag about 6 1/2 feet long and 1 1/2 feet wide.
They will supplement about 250 belt-worn radiation detectors that the
department also bought from Saint-Gobain, Mr. Kelly said. Those
devices are designed to form a sort of moving detection curtain so
that police officers can be on the street interacting with the public
as they seek to detect radioactive material.
Saint-Gobain's regional sales manager, Jim Mondine, said the larger
portable detectors could serve many purposes, not only for the city
and the Police Department, but also for the private sector. "These
would be ideal to set up, say, at Yankee Stadium at a baseball game,"
he said, "or in front of the New York Stock Exchange."
-----------------
Loads of Radioactive Berries Seized
MOSCOW (AP) - Nearly 1,500 pounds of berries from an area heavily hit
by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster were seized this month from
Moscow markets because of radioactive contamination, an official
announced on Friday.
The bilberries, akin to blueberries, were found to have 14 times the
acceptable levels cesium, said Yelena Ter-Markirosova, spokeswoman
for Radon, the capital's radiation-monitoring agency.
She said experts had confiscated 1,472 pounds of the berries - grown
in western Belarus - since June 18.
----------------
Lieberman Recommends Technology Agency
WASHINGTON (AP) - June 29 The Homeland Security Department will need
an alert and aggressive technology development agency that can come
up quickly with new security devices and systems, Sen. Joseph
Lieberman said Friday.
``We need dozens of new security technologies, and we need them
quickly,'' said Lieberman, D-Conn., who is working with the White
House to set up the new department.
Congress completed a week of hearings Friday on President Bush's plan
to merge 100 federal entities and 170,000 employees into a single
Cabinet department devoted to domestic security.
Congressional leaders, while rushing to pass early versions of the
plan by the end of July, have been suggesting modifications to
specifics among the White House's proposals.
Lieberman wants the department to have what he called the Security
Advanced Research Projects Agency, which would be modeled on the
Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The Defense Department's agency was formed after the Soviet Union's
1957 launch of Sputnik, the first manmade Earth satellite, and
provided money and computers to facilitate U.S. scientists'
competition with their Cold War adversaries.
Money for the agency spurred creation of several commercial
technologies as well, including the Internet.
Lieberman wants the security research agency to do the same thing,
but for the defense of U.S. territory. He suggested agency scientists
might work on devices to detect chemical, biological, radiological
and nuclear weapons for border crossings, airports or seaports, or
buildings that could detect intruders and protect themselves from
sabotage.
``We know our enemies will do their worst to apply technology to try
and terrorize our people and disrupt our way of life,'' Lieberman
said. ``We have an urgent duty now to do our best to develop better
technologies to pre-empt, prevent and protect against even their most
advanced and unpredictable attacks.''
William Madia, director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak
Ridge, Tenn., agreed with the necessity of an advanced research
agency in a Homeland Security Department.
``This program should be designed to close the gap between new ideas
and basic science advances and deployable solutions,'' Madia said.
They are already working on some new domestic defense ideas at Oak
Ridge, including a radiation sensor that could be placed on cell
phone towers to send early warning data to officials of biological or
chemical weapons use in urban areas.
The system was endorsed Monday by the House Appropriations Committee
with a $5 million commitment for testing.
Besides detecting poisons, sensors at each site could provide weather
information, such as wind speed and direction, that could help
predict the path of anthrax, radiation particles from a bomb or
lethal gases.
Any of the nation's 30,000 cell phone towers or 100,000 rooftop cell
phone relay stations could be used, Madia said.
``This is a good partnership between government needs and private
sector needs,'' Madia said.
On the Net: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency:
http://www.darpa.mil/
Oak Ridge National Laboratory: http://www.ornl.gov/
-----------------
Me and My Geiger Counter
June 27 - NY Times - SHOULD I keep my Geiger counter running during
dinner? Will its constant clicking keep me up at night?
Those are the kinds of questions I've been asking myself since a
black plastic Geiger counter, a camera-size device designed to
measure gamma, alpha, beta and X-rays, arrived last week. All I had
to do was switch it on and set it on my dining table.
The clicks about 10 per minute announced the presence of
background radiation (generally considered harmless) in my Greenwich
Village apartment. In a nuclear emergency an attack or a reactor
meltdown the rhythm would become more urgent.
"At 100 clicks a minute, I'd start to worry," said Tim Flanegin of
Mineralab in Prescott, Ariz., who sold me the $279 unit.
Geiger counters, it seems, are the new Cipro. "Since 9/11, orders
have doubled," said Mr. Flanegin, whose company uses the Web address
www.geigercounters.com. Prices start at $170 for a kit and climb past
$900 for a particularly sensitive model.
The company's original customers were mineral collectors, Mr.
Flanegin said, "but then this whole other market developed." First
came Sept. 11, he said, and then another surge this spring, as
tensions rose between India and Pakistan, and the Justice Department
announced that it had foiled a plot to set off a crude radioactive
weapon a "dirty bomb" in the United States.
International Medcom, a manufacturer in Sebastopol, Calif., that also
sells units to the public at www.geigercounter.com, is having trouble
meeting demand, said its president, Dan Sythe. "We're hiring people
and trying to increase production," he said.
In my case, the decision to buy a counter followed a decision to buy
potassium iodide, a drug that reduces the chances of thyroid cancer
after exposure to fallout from a reactor. More than a dozen states
plan to distribute the drug to people near nuclear power plants. (I
live 40 miles from a nuclear plant, but the drug could also be useful
after a dirty-bomb attack.)
Once I got the pills a three-month supply, available on the
Internet for $18 I began wondering how I would know when it was
time to take them.
"The question is, do you trust the government to keep you informed?"
asked Lionel Zuckier, director of nuclear medicine at the New Jersey
Medical School in Newark. Even assuming a policy of full disclosure,
there might be delays possibly breakdowns in communication in
getting information to the public.
Debbie Baker, who lives near the nuclear power plant at Three Mile
Island in Pennsylvania, has kept a Geiger counter on her window sill
for 14 years.
In 1979, when an accident at the plant released radiation into the
atmosphere, Ms. Baker recalled angrily, "We didn't get information
for three days." At the time, she said she had a 9-month-old daughter
at home. The window-sill counter "represents peace of mind," said Ms.
Baker, who is president of a citizens' monitoring committee.
Not everyone, though, thinks the Geiger counter should take its place
alongside the home smoke detector.
David Allard, who oversees radiation-disaster preparedness for
Pennsylvania, advises against the purchase of personal Geiger
counters. For one thing, "you have to know how to interpret the
data," he said.
"If someone who had just ingested radioactive material in connection
with a medical procedure walked past your house, the thing
would start clicking like crazy," Mr. Allard said. "And there are
trucks that carry nuclear material in the normal course of things.
You'd be in a constant state of alarm."
For an actual emergency, "there are plans in place, response teams
that know what to do," he said. "The best thing is to turn on the
TV and follow official instructions."
Told of Mr. Allard's advice, Ms. Baker scoffed. She said her detector
is set to sound whenever radiation hits three times the
background level in her area, an event that she said typically occurs
once a year, after a heavy rainfall brings down naturally
radioactive dust.
So if a bona fide alarm went off, what then?
Dirty bombs, nuclear weapons and reactors present different issues,
of course. The Council on Foreign Relations, in an
encyclopedia of terrorism on the Web (www.terrorismanswers.com),
states, "In the case of a dust cloud thrown up by a dirty bomb,
experts stress the importance of prompt decontamination taking off
outer layers of clothing and washing any exposed skin."
In the case of "penetrating radiation" like gamma rays or neutrons,
the site advises those affected "to minimize the duration of their
exposure by getting as far away from the radiation source as
possible."
In other words, act quickly.
Still, $279 is a lot to spend for an alarm that probably will never
sound. So what about some sort of communal early-warning system:
public Geiger counters transmitting data around the clock?
One such network, in central Pennsylvania, was installed in the early
90's by Ms. Baker's nonprofit group, the Three Mile Island
Citizens' Monitoring Network. It posts the readings at www.tmi-
cmn.org/map.htm, although Ms. Baker said that recent
thunderstorms had knocked out part of the system.
A larger network with 178 counters has been operating for more than a
decade in France, which relies heavily on nuclear power; it
can be monitored at www.opri.fr/html_opri/web_mesure_som.htm. About
eight years ago, the designers of the French system, called
Tιlιray, installed a unit atop a federal building at Varick and
Houston Streets in Manhattan for the United States Department of
Energy. The department has since added its own monitors at the site,
and posts results, updated every 15 minutes, at
www.eml.doe.gov/homeland.
Mitchell Erickson, director of the department's Environmental
Measurements Laboratory, said his agency was trying to secure $5
million to install some 30 monitors around the city. "We don't have
that kind of money in our budget," he said.
Dr. Zuckier of the New Jersey Medical School said he had proposed
such a system for the city over three years ago. Linked by the
Internet, the units could generate a kind of weather map of
radiation. But he said he got nowhere, in his view because officials
feared
that real-time information could cause panic. But that was before
Sept. 11. Francis McCarton, deputy commissioner of the city's
Office of Emergency Management, said this week: "We have a new
commissioner in place. We'd be happy to take a look at the
plan."
Dr. Zuckier's own demonstration unit, at Jacobi Hospital in the
Bronx, feeds data to a graph at www .awel.com/nyc. A disaster would
send the line on the graph shooting up, Dr. Zuckier said.
Certainly, during an emergency, the radiation monitor or its Internet
connection could fail. (Indeed, if the attack generated an
electromagnetic pulse, most Geiger counters would be rendered
useless. Some older models, including government surplus
counters, would probably survive a pulse, according to
Radmeters4U.com, a company that says it has 100,000 counters from the
60's and 70's at its warehouse in Gonzales, Tex.)
For a newer, PC-compatible model, Dr. Zuckier referred me to Brian
Boardman of Aware Electronics of Wilmington, Del., the
company that made the unit at Jacobi (www.aw-el.com). Aware's Geiger
counters lack dials or displays and feed information to PC's
instead. (Other companies make similar models for Macs, including
Black Cat Systems, which is online at
www.blackcatsystems.com.)
For $149, I ordered Aware's RM-60, which arrived the next day.
Connecting it to my PC took less than five minutes. Almost
immediately I had a graph of radiation levels in my bedroom a
chilling if fascinating sight. Mr. Boardman advised that as long as
the reading remained flat, at around 15 microroentgens per hour,
there was nothing to worry about. (The unit can be programmed to
sound alarms or even send e-mail warnings when radiation levels
increase.)
Mr. Boardman had enclosed an egg-size rock containing uranium ore.
When I held it near the small round opening on top of the RM-
60, the line on the graph shot up. The same radioactive stone helped
me confirm that my hand-held counter from Mineralab was
working.
Of the two devices, the RM-60, at half the price of the stand-alone
unit, seemed the better buy. Its PC feed allows you to compare
radiation levels over time and to check data accumulated while you
are sleeping or otherwise engaged.
And yet, if I needed to evacuate in an emergency, I would want to
take my Geiger counter with me. Mr. Boardman recommended that I buy
one of two accessories an attachment that generates audio clicks,
for $19, or an L.C.D. display for $159 or that I connect my RM-60
to a palmtop instead of my desktop computer.
I went ahead and ordered the $19 attachment. It has been a week since
my first Geiger counter arrived, and I am beginning to find its slow
click reassuring.
***************************************************************
Sandy Perle Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100
Director, Technical Extension 2306
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Service Fax:(714) 668-3149
ICN Pharmaceuticals, Inc. E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net
ICN Plaza, 3300 Hyland Avenue E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com
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