GeigerCrowd: Collaborative radiation measurement project [Japan]

The difficulty in reporting on radiation is trying to provide useful information to an audience unfamiliar with the field. In my opinion the trick becomes to explain the levels in a context the audience can understand so that you don't have to first cover:

1. Differing units (grays, sieverts, rem), prefixes (micro, milli...), and rates (instantaneous measure expanded to hourly rate, hourly average, year).

2. How you come in contact with radiation (consumption/direct contact of radioactive material, exposure).

3. Alpha, Beta, and Gamma radiation.

4. The linear no-threshold model of risk applied to ionizing radiation. (And the debate surrounding this.)

5. Background radiation.

6. Localized radiation versus full-body exposure. (thyroid, radiation therapy).

7. The limited number of data points we actually have.

8. Logarithms. (Radiation typically being presented on a logarithmic scale.)

And I'm sure that I've missed including things that are useful to helping understand radiation. All of this combines to make it really easy to post alarmist numbers (100 times normal radiation levels!) that may still be well under accepted values.

A project I worked on to help try and address providing context is here: http://www.radiationinfo.org

The pervasiveness of radiation data, notably from random people putting their Geiger counters on ustream but also from the government (daily per-prefecture updates on municipal water, rain water, and atmospheric fallout), is the only thing keeping us sane in Tokyo.

So I really appreciate this idea, and indeed I wouldn't feel as reassured that we're okay here if the government was the only source of that data.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/千葉市稲毛区の放射線量

http://atmc.jp/water