What is the Alert Level of CPM's?

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 2011-03-23 22:50

I have been trying to understand more about the monitors. I am reading a graph that says Kansas City, Ks. substained over 700 CPM for over a 24 hour period. March 16th, and 17th.I would like your professional opinion if this is dangerous. The quote on the page,"To-date, levels recorded at this monitor have been thousands of times below any conservative level of concern."
I sure appreciate an answer, because I do live in this area. Thank you.
Sharon

‹ Amount of radiation - from a worried pregnant woman Please can someone clarify something..... ›

How to access old site

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 2011-03-31 20:53.

Go to google

type in

www.epa.gov/radiation

on the first result you will see a small link "cached"

This will display googles cached OLD version of the map which is still being updated :)

I'm not sure if I can answer

Submitted by dchivers on Wed, 2011-03-23 23:10.

I'm not sure if I can answer this. I would need to compare the counts per minute (CPM) with some normal background. However, I think these come from RadNet reports which is run by the EPA and I'm not sure they have the sensitivity to detect the levels we are observing here on the West Coast, which is extremely low. The rain we are experiencing here on the west coast is very efficiency in reducing whatever is in the air by scrubbing the particles and transporting them to the ground. I have not seen other universities in the center of the country that have produced high resolution results as we have, so I am assuming the levels are undetectable in Kansas City. If you here anything, let us know.

Thank you

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 2011-03-24 00:57.

Thank you for your speedy response. The EPA website, changed their whole map today. They had all the numbers on the first map, but today they changed it into a graph. Yesterday, the Kansas City, Ks. station read 0CPM and they put up the new graph, and it read very high, for that area, and several other areas. I do feel more reassured about my families safety, thank you for your response.

Also note that the EPA

Submitted by Brian (not verified) on Thu, 2011-03-24 10:48.

Also note that the EPA radiation monitoring websites says:

Electrical interference can cause spikes, shown on graphs as one point significantly higher than the rest of the data.

I would presume that is what showed up on the graph.