Soil testing

Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 2011-03-31 06:33

I was wondering are you going to conduct soil testing for iodine-131, cesium-137, etc.?

‹ When were your samples purchased? Accumulated fallout projections to date ›

THis is so great

Submitted by mark jack, Sr. (not verified) on Fri, 2011-04-01 07:36.

THis is so great informations. I will come back

We are testing grasses and

Submitted by dchivers on Thu, 2011-03-31 07:38.

We are testing grasses and spinach which are a good estimate of what is in the soil. Testing soil produces some complications in our calibration. But it could be done. We will consider it but the diversity of the number of tests we are currently doing has saturated our capabilities at this point. We consider milk, tap water, and vegetables to be of higher priority.

Given that species of plant,

Submitted by earthquake prepper (not verified) on Thu, 2011-03-31 17:09.

Given that species of plant, soil type, and available nutrients appear to have a large impact on plant uptake of radioactive material, I'd also like to see straight soil samples tested.

I'd also be interested in knowing how deep contamination is found, and how that changes over time, since I'm sure you all don't have enough to do right now. ;^)

And may I add to the general THANK YOU for what you all are doing, and may all those involved get lots of accepted papers from the work!

I'm all for

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 2011-03-31 16:14.

the veggie testing being highest priority...spinich was the first thing the Japanese yanked from the shelves right?

testing veggies

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 2011-03-31 16:05.

my deepest gratitude for testing the veggies. (seriously). but, you will have to do it ASAP if you want it to match with what is in the soil. Whatever was rained on, will be picked shortly, or already has been- the soil; remains in tact. Can you do the soil instead please?

Soil testing is a bit more

Submitted by dchivers on Thu, 2011-03-31 20:58.

Soil testing is a bit more tricky as we would have to perform a recalibration on our equipment. In general, the calibration method takes into account the self shielding effect of the material we are testing. We have calibrated for "liquid" near water density and our air filter geometries with multi-source standards, but the soil will actually incur much higher self attenuation than liquids. This attenuation will also limit what we can see and since we are near minimum detectable activity I'm not sure this is worth down-prioritization of milk and tap water. The vegetables have a density "near" water and we can get away with that to some extent. Just as the rain water is a good measure of what is in the air, we feel certain vegetables like spinach and kale are good measures of what is in the soil. Hopefully this makes sense.