It's Happening Again! Harrisonburg is Hazmat Level Radiation! Bakersfield similar to Harrisonburg now!

That by itself should be cause for concern by every American! The Germans did the right thing this time.

The Germans have it right, but yet they still are surrounded by the rest of the world which is screwing up.

Harrisonburg chart today.

[link to blog.alexanderhiggins.com]

Richmond and Harrisonburg are within a relatively short distance of Louisa, Virginia where they had that 5.8 earthquake last Aug. The area around Louisa (to Charlottesville) continues to have experienced dozens of aftershocks (lower mag) on a regular basis since then. So, something is obviously happening underground in that region. Perhaps that 'something' is extending even further out and is somehow releasing radiation? Could it be excessive amounts of radon gas offgassing from fractured bedrock due to underground rumblings in that entire region, possibly affecting Harrisonburg and Richmond?

[link to www.usatoday.com]

There is a radon gas map of Virginia here that shows Harrisonburg and Richmond being in or very near the red areas of the map (level 1 with highest potential):

[link to www.epa.gov]

So, this is my theory.

Thanks for the ideas, I think if it is not caued by Fukushima that one or many nuclear plants may be venting or leaking. Could a large scale radon problem have been caused by the earthquakes? ?

That is my theory. Large scale radon problem caused by the earthquakes.

I don't know anything about that. Radon in a house yes, Radon in a whole city? Sounds wrong.

Well, here you go:

[link to www.tokyotimes.com]

Very interesting! We are not ruling out radiation from a nuclear reactor though.

Changes in the density of radon gas in the atmosphere can predict a possible earthquake, according to the results of the study made by a research team from the Kobe Pharmaceutical University, Tohoku University and Fukushima Medical University.

The group found that there were severe changes in radon gas before the 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck the northeastern region of Japan on March 11.

Radon is a natural radioactive gas that comes from small amounts of uranium found in rocks and soils and which the Health Protection Agency said does not cause any health hazard because it is dispersed in the air usually at very low levels.

The point of view you offer lacks proportion.

From a more relevant perspective....

It would take a person quite some time to consume 13 pounds of salt substitute, thus the 7 pounds of potassium within it.

Radioactive potassium 40, which makes up .001% of natural potassium gives off the weakest and least harmful beta radiation.

Potassium is constantly and easily evacuated from the body and replenished with new potassium.

Whereas the radioactive particles released from Fukushima, if they are still measurable, are likely NOT iodine with a short half life, but something worse, and regardless whether iodine or something longer lived like cesium, strontium, or plutonium, they are heavy elements that are not so easy to dislodge from the body AND they are emitting alpha or gamma rads which are no fun unless you are an X-Man.

True.
Consuming the KCL would obviously be impossible, and consuming a millionth of a gram of cesium 137 would be so easy as to be un-noticeable (a millionth of a gm of cesium would have about 3 million Bq). Exposure to 100,000 Bq of anything is not likely to be serious in itself, certainly not externally and likely not internally, except for polonium. Polonium is probably the most poisonous substance, with a dose equivalent of 0.51 microSV/Bq if taken orally, so a fatal dose of 4 Sv would only require about 8 million Bq. The dose equivalent for cs137 is 6.5 E-8 per Bq, approximately 1/8th as toxic as Polonium on a per Bq basis. That would be only 20 micrograms cs137 or so ingested to produce 4 Sv dose.

There are wild hogs foraging a few hundred miles from Chernobyl that have been recorded as having 400,000 Bq/KG.
A 100 KG boar would have 40 million Bq cs137 in his body. They are tougher than us.

To check these numbers, Google "dose equivalent/Bq cesium polonium" and check under cesium137 in one of the online encyclopedias.

The highest readings for today.

Idaho Falls 650 cpm

[link to blog.alexanderhiggins.com]

Harrisonburg 625 cpm

[link to blog.alexanderhiggins.com]

Here are all of the charts. [link to blog.alexanderhiggins.com]

The EPA has has well over a years time to fix the monitors that don't register radiation at all. I am guessing it is not that hard to do and that they are bastids.

I wonder if I can get another incident report for my opinions about the dysfunctionality of the EPA? lol

Here is radiation network in case you like them. I did for a while because according to them, it's all good.

[link to radiationnetwork.com]

It has been said the radiation network is bogus, that you can't tell who is working for the government or if they are working for the government. Of course I emailed that comment to them so they could defend themselves. This is the place where they quit answering my questions. I wish I would have asked them why they don't match the EPA first. Prior to these 2 questions they answered my few dumb quesions right away. It's says they are busy and might not answer questions. From my experience "asking dumb questions" and their timely and kind responses I think that they do have time but just saying they are busy causes a lot of people to not ask questions. It reduces their emails. Mixed messages here. It is possible they were offended by my question but I wanted an answer direct from the source. It's not like they hadn't answered my previous questions. :)

[link to radiationnetwork.com]

I suppose it is possible that the radiation network is telling the truth and the EPA is just trying to scare the hell out of everybody.

Before the age of nuclear technology, cancer of any kind of all was known and accepted to be a VERY rare disease.

Now practically everyone in some regions of the US and Canada, you know who you are by the effects, are affected by cancer.

EPA Omaha latest is about 275 cpm

[link to blog.alexanderhiggins.com]

At the same time the Radiation Network monitor which I think is at Boys Town in Omaha says just 12 cpm.

Muzzle said something about EPA and Radiation Network varying due to altitude. Both monitors are in Omaha. Don't let the Muzzle confuse or derail the facts!

Muzzle is the new atom boy, he throws out a bunch of gobbledy gook and makes himself seem like an expert.

Warning Muzzle, my thread and I ban if I want to.

Even if their information is correct, Radiation Network is based on a totally incorrect method of measuring risk.

Radiation Network simply measures radiation levels,
whereas the EPA has HEPA filters to filter fallout material from the air. I am not sure but the EPA might take this reading from air filters into account in their beta readings.

What Fukushima and other reactors are releasing is NOT radiation. What they are releasing are radioactive isotopes.

Radiation is light or just like light. It is here at its moment, and then it is gone, it no longer exists.

Radioactive isotopes on the other hand emit radiation, usually for very long periods of time, and if they are ingested into the body they can damage local cell tissue and seed cancers.

At the following link, if you scroll down to the first image and accompanying text about 2/3rds down the page you will see the images of the range of effect of a microscopic particle of plutonium in lung tissue.

[link to www.nuclearcrimes.org]

Particles like this of plutonium will probably not even register a change on a simple environmental reading of radiation on a Geiger counter, until the level of contamination is way beyond safe levels.

A common Geiger counter wont even register the radiation from a speck of of alpha emitters like Uranium, or Plutonium, or Thorium until it is a very short distance, like an inch away, and the air could be full of these materials and hardly register an extra cpm click on the Geiger counter.

That is why these releases of radioactive isotopes are generally of little risk as long as they remain outside of the body, but if little pollen sized specks are ingested into the body they pose a serious long term cancer risk.

I believe that the EPA at least started as an organization that was truly interested in the health of the public, and many employees of the EPA still might feel that way. That was probably the culture that their testing procedures, of testing air filters, developed from.

However with rising man-made radioisotopes in the environment, which seemingly nobody can prevent, not even the politicians (or so they think), then there are probably political forces which would want to either prevent the EPA from testing correctly, or hide their data from the public.

In these modern times the testing procedure of Radiation Network is mostly irrelevant and does not for the most part reveal risk of radio-isotopes, and if it does then the health risk is already far higher than small changes in background radiation may reveal. Background radiation is not that big of a deal to some extent, people can tolerate quite a lot to some extent, as measured on a geiger counter.

Besides, such a so called citizen network could have been founded and run by any organization with any interest in mind, for all we know, but their very premise of how to test is patently deceptive concerning the nature risks that people face.

Last Edited by ehecatl on 08/13/2012 03:05 PM

Thank you, I read some and have it bookmarked.

It's clear that I wasted my money buying a geiger counter..right?

I appreciate your imput. Great link!

No, I don't think that it is a waste to buy a Geiger counter by any means. It is a first step and shows your interest in testing for these invisible threats. But if the concern is radioactive isotopes released by humans, and not radiation itself, then you will need to use your gieger counter to test things that will concentrate the materials that might be present in the form of dust or material.

Normally in nature there are practically or almost, no purified specks composed of hundreds or thousands of radioactive atoms floating around. You say you live near uranium mines so we could say that you are an exception to that, except that the mining process that would allow uranium to enter the atmosphere in a dust form is also man-made and unnatural.

Simply put, most life-forms on earth have not evolved to deal with heightened radiation or isotope levels in the environment. This is especially the case with humans since we have normally long life spans compared with other creatures, and since it is us, we experience the effects be they subtle or extreme, directly.

Use your geiger counter to test air filters, from your vacuum cleaner, hvac system, or car air filter, or concentrate the dust to test that from these filters. The sensor of your geiger counter should be within about 1/4 inch of the dust or the filter, because that is how far most alpha radiation travels before self-destructing.

Best to put a thin plastic wrap over your geiger counter at first for this test, because if the dust is contaminated it can get into your geiger counter and give it false high readings from then on.

Some say that high readings in a filter would be due to natural radon, and that is a patent lie, because radon is a gas that will not trap in an air filter. Radon will accumulate in a basement though so bring the air filter or it's dust up into an open area to test it.

If you get an average reading just 10 or 20% over an open air reading where you are not measuring the filter dust, then it is likely you already may have hundreds of times the safe levels of dust of radio-isotopes in the air.

You can measure radiation levels in rainwater, but if the offending isotopes are alpha emitters then most of that radiation won't even pass through the thin layer of water. You could better test water by evaporating it and measuring the mineral residue that is left in the bottom of the pan.

However if you suspect that the source of the isotope fallout is Fukushima, and we all know that a lot of it is, then probably the only action you could take is to move from the US. If moving is not an option, then there really is no reason to own a geiger counter. Humans are simply not able to fix or decontaminate these types of radiation problems, at least the way they supposedly address these problems now. It is mostly window-dressing and false hope.

It is possible though that a person could return to a region contaminated by fallout decades later, when most of the dust is under the surface of the earth or washed away, and not floating around in the air, but one should still be cautious of old dusty areas, carpets, furniture, clothes, etc, even then.

And if you live in the eastern half of the US, you are contaminated for sure, sooner or later, not much reason to buy a geiger counter, because if you are at all concerned about your progeny, you should simply move permanently from that part of the planet.

So a geiger counter is not the best measuring device for the type of risk we are looking at, but with some knowledge it is possible to get some useful data out of it, but that data is useless unless a person is willing to act on it.

Here is Chris Busby testing air filters.



Last Edited by ehecatl on 08/13/2012 02:57 PM

You're threatening to ban me for providing accurate info about your questions?

Try to read how the EPA measures their Radiation levels. They clearly state that they use filter and fan system which has a rate of 60 cubic meters/hour. They then measure the radioactive dust on the filter. They provide pictures of the set-up. It is true that their readings are considerably higher than normal.

Radiation network does not use a filter system. They use live geiger counters measuring ambient air only. Their method is also explained on
their site.

You have asked why the difference in their levels, and I have tried to explained it to you. You're apparently not willing to accept an answer to your question.

You needn't bother to ban me, for I won't post on your threads again.

Last Edited by MuzzleBreak on 08/13/2012 04:55 PM

Well there you go.

The government would have no selfish motive to lie about something in that way, the high readings, however the government beyond the level of the EPA probably is not taking the step of informing the public of a possibly serious risk due to contamination from radio-isotopes, IMO.

Now considering that the EPA's reading is based on air filters, and is high, and Radiation Network is based on simple ambient readings, which are not especially elevated, this would seem to be an indication of contamination from fallout of radio-isotopes.

If you wanted more evidence you best carefully (using a good dust mask) gather the dust from an air filter, and send it to a lab that can analyze for radio-isotopes.

Last Edited by ehecatl on 08/14/2012 12:11 AM

I did not read the material yet you two are referencing, although probably did in the last week.

But in any case naturally occurring radioactive potassium is probably not usually nearly so dangerous relative to it's radioactive output levels, compared to the more unnatural isotopes, for at least three reasons I can think of off-hand.

1) In the case of radioactive potassium it is probably not going to be in the form of a clump of thousands of radioactive potassium atoms lodged in one spot inside the body. It is this kind of concentration of many plutonium, strontium or uranium atoms in one microscopic hard to detect clump that increases dramatically the chance of dna damage and cancer to the immediate surrounding cell tissues. I don't think that this situation would occur with natural radioactive potassium.
ref.- alpha tracks from plutonium particle in lung tissue
[link to www.nuclearcrimes.org]

2) Potassium is frequently evacuated from the body and does not tend to concentrate in the body.

3) Since potassium is a naturally occurring radio-isotope, then biology has also been able to evolve and adapt to the characteristic of it, unlike the different characteristics of the unnatural isotopes, which for example concentrate in the bones, or muscles, or nervous system, or thyroid gland, etc., depending on the unnatural or unusual isotope type.

I took a kind of potassium that doesn't harm the body for years and it helped my energy or lack of energy a lot.

I have my geiger counter packaged and ready to mail to a car shop in Omaha. This shop gets 10 to 14 old air filters a month. Additionally the shop owner was interested in testing parts he gets from Japan. I asked him to take videos. He (my shop owner guy) is going to go down by the river with it. I asked him to go to Ft. Calhoun and he said he would.

Now that is my test. I am looking forward to it.

Yuma spike to 500 cpm, Omaha spiked to 400cpm yesterday, Harrisonburg went down to 375cpm. Austin and Kearney have been taken off the charts along with Ft. Smith
.
Other cities are high as well.

[link to blog.alexanderhiggins.com]

I think it is going to be that if many cities spike they will be taken off of the charts so we won't have any idea. It took a lot of time and a strong push to get Omaha monitored again. My guess is the argument was that If you want to put Ft. Calhoon online again you have to monitor the area in a way that we can see it.

Alexander Higgins EPA Radnet has been turned off. It may be temporary.

No news, is bad news.

They have turned of the Alexander Higgins EPA Radnet before. He puts it out there just like the EPA used to, so it is easy to read. I suppose it is stil up in a form that I can't read. I wonder if he got a lot of clicks from this thread? I hope it comes back.

Thread: MAXIMUM ALERT! Cesium-137 Detected In Pennsylvania

It's back up and Ft. Smith and St. Louis are back online. Lincoln is reading 400 right now with Omaha around 350. Radiation Network has Omaha at 17 now, up from 12.