Seawater source of -: 0.026 mR/hr 1' from 120lb KCl, 2x background

[howard long <hflong@pacbell.net>]

Leslie Salt Co in Fremont CA has c a square mile of salt beds in the San Francisco Bay.

Inquiry about its KCl byproduct of Na Cl, referred me to Home Depot and Lowes stores, which sold me Diamond Crystal Potassium Chloride "alternative choice to sodium chloride for your water softener. It has real benefit to patients on a low sodium diet for high blood pressure, so will be readily available. However, I can't find a comfortable configuration of 3, 40 lb bags that gives more than about 2-4 x  the ambient here at 350' elevation east of SF.  I'd like 10 to 100 times.

 

Howard Long



Franz Schönhofer <franz.schoenhofer@CHELLO.AT> wrote:



st1\:*{behavior:url(#default#ieooui) }

 



 



Franz Schoenhofer



PhD, MR iR



Habicherg. 31/7



A-1160 Vienna



AUSTRIA



phone (international) -43-699-1168-1319



phone (national) 0699-1168-1319



 



 



Russ, Stewart and others,



 



First of all I did not know, that potassium chloride (KCl) was used as a water softener salt, to my knowledge sodium chloride (NaCl) is used for it. Maybe systems are in use in the USA which prefer KCl. Discharged NaCl is not environmentally friendly and neither is KCl. KCl is known as an efficient “quick melt” thawing salt, though because of its environmentally negative impact in Europe on a large scale there is increasingly used a wizard salt, which to my knowledge contains mostly urea. Nevermind, because of global warming we will need in Europe no thawing salt at all in the future and I can rely in Vienna on the community snow ploughs and even more on our excellent public transport anyway……



 



Fertilizers are very well known not only to contain potassium and thereby K-40, but also NORM, depending on the way it was produced, reaching from uranium, thorium and radium isotopes and their progeny. Increased doserates are therefore no surprise for me. I have seen about thirty years ago the bunkers of the biggest fertilizer factory in Austria, which have contained thousands if not millions of tons of fertilizer. I am still concerned about the radon concentration in these bunkers and even more on the gamma dose rates people receive there and during transport in lorries. I would have very much wanted to find out, but never had a chance.   



 



This problem is the same everywhere in the world. “Everyone” responsible knows about it. Where are the regulations? Where are the controllers? When LNT will be out of business this problem will be obsolete anyway. Or should customers all over the world buy these fertilizers and thawing salts and put them below their beds in order to benefit from the hormetic effect…..



 



Best regards,



 



Franz



 



 



 



 



 



 





-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----

Von: owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu [mailto:owner-radsafe@list.vanderbilt.edu] Im Auftrag von Russ Johnson

Gesendet: Mittwoch, 27. Oktober 2004 20:40

An: radsafe@list.Vanderbilt.Edu

Betreff: Re: Correction: 0.026 mR/hr 1' from 120lb KCl, 2x background



 



Interesting topic, thought I'd jump in. We have a professor here that bought a 50 lb bag of commercial garden fertilizer at our local Walmart. He uses it in one of his classes as a low dose rate gamma source demo. Just for kicks, I surveyed it with a pancake GM meter and saw a solid 0.15 mR/hr at contact with the bag. GMs are known to over-respond at low energy (which this isn't), but in any case we're still talking mR, not microR. I can't imagine tons of that stuff sitting in one place! 

-Russ 



farbersa@optonline.net wrote: