> Lucky thing some kid walked around with a geiger counter. He recorded the levels, so the numbers that officials are hiding, he knows them. His counter can be tested
Neither the linked article nor your's said anything about what kind of "geiger counter" this kid had; whether it was something picked up off ebay, an old civil defence unit, or some kit or custom made thing from Electronic Goldmine (a native AZ electronics surplus and education kit supplier - https://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/)...
It's very well possible that the kid has no real numbers; that is completely unknown.
I'd be willing to bet you could walk into an old mining bar in Flagstaff and have more exposure to natural radiation used in the building materials than you'd experience from these buckets of old ore. Natural radiation sources like these are all over the place in Arizona.
The only real danger I could see and understand, though, is whether these buckets were covered or open; could someone or a kid have "dug through them" with their hands, or been in closer proximity to the material inside - where the dust or whatnot could be left on their hands to be ingested or inhaled in some manner.
That would be a much different situation than merely being near it for a small amount of time.
> where the dust or whatnot could be left on their hands to be ingested or inhaled in some manner.
This by far would be my number one concern. Proximity doesn't seem to be much to worry about (238-Uranium has an alpha decay and doesn't travel far in air). But inhaling or ingesting radioactive material completely changes the danger level.
> Natural radiation sources like these are all over the place in Arizona.
Or... Grand Central Station. But... you have to consider context, which a lot of reporters don't. Consider this quote.
"It's worth noting that if Grand Central Station were a nuclear power plant, it would be shut down for exceeding the maximum allowable annual dose of radiation for employees."[0]
Yikes! We can trace down the dosage level to 120mrem/yr[1] (1.2mSv), which we can indeed see is on the order of average dosages for radiation workers [2] or 1/20th of the allowable dosage! BUT we can look at [2] more and see that 100mSv is "Lowest annual level at which increase in cancer risk is evident (UNSCEAR)" (threshold model).
So when I see articles like this I'm always a tad hesitant to even read them. They frequently focus on the first part of the last paragraph and give no indication to what these things mean. Or even worse, are misleading like that gizmodo article (I would in fact call this dangerous reporting). Radiation quotas are purposefully (and I agree with this) put to be far below what one might also call "safe" (I'd _upper bound_ "safe" as <100mSv/yr but think most would agree 20mSv is "safe"). Yeah, we should pay attention and not expose ourselves to radiation unnecessarily, but let's also be realistic about the danger (especially when we're in such dire need if we're going to solve our climate problem).
Neither the linked article nor your's said anything about what kind of "geiger counter" this kid had; whether it was something picked up off ebay, an old civil defence unit, or some kit or custom made thing from Electronic Goldmine (a native AZ electronics surplus and education kit supplier - https://www.goldmine-elec-products.com/)...
It's very well possible that the kid has no real numbers; that is completely unknown.
I'd be willing to bet you could walk into an old mining bar in Flagstaff and have more exposure to natural radiation used in the building materials than you'd experience from these buckets of old ore. Natural radiation sources like these are all over the place in Arizona.
The only real danger I could see and understand, though, is whether these buckets were covered or open; could someone or a kid have "dug through them" with their hands, or been in closer proximity to the material inside - where the dust or whatnot could be left on their hands to be ingested or inhaled in some manner.
That would be a much different situation than merely being near it for a small amount of time.