Crowdsourcing Japan's radiation levels

[ensho]

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/04/201142317359479927.html


A group of motivated individuals have come together to create a community approach to gathering radiation data in Japan.


There is a certain element of helplessness to living in northeast Japan right now.

-snip-

It's the fear of radiation, invisible, odourless and potentially deadly, leaking out of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant and entering their bodies via contaminated air, food and water.

The only way to get any peace of mind is to get accurate, timely information on radiation levels (which can also fluctuate) and therein, as the Bard would say, lies the rub, because said information is far from accessible.

-snip-

Out of thin air, a group of folks based in the US and Japan created a network that distributes Geiger counters to teams of people who record radiation levels in a consistent manner and upload it all to the Safecast site.

-long snip telling of Geiger counter backlog, farmers needing to know about their crops, people worrying about the food and water, etc., etc. but with a group of people with counters can get better actual facts-
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there are pics

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Which types of radiation do the geiger counters...count?

I had read somewhere that one of the problems with measuring radiation by "Geiger stations" was that not all types were measured by counters.

:shrug: