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Radiation Detection Wrist Watch
luigi writes "I4U has this story: vigiWATCH is a newly created swiss company that offers the smallest, most precise radiation detector worldwide in a normal size wrist watch.
The watch displays current radioactivity rates from 0.00001mSv/h to 4.00000 mSv/h and cumulative radioactive dose from 0.001mSv/h to 9999 mSv/h. The precision is +/- 25% over total range.
Besides the radioactivity detection, its also showing the time in a digital and analog display. The watch looks like a normal casual wrist watch. Hope this watch never becomes standard equipment for survival on this planet.
The watch is sold on the site for $1100."
Me thinks that if current rates are in mSv/h, then cumulative doses should drop the temporal dimension, ie, mSv (no /h)!
-- Samir Gupta, Ph. D. Head, New Technology Research Group, Nintendo Co. Ltd., Kyoto, Japan.
Nope. Those are _MICRO_Sieverts, not millisieverts. That's 0.0001 mSv/hr. You'll still see it on that watch, supposedly.
:)
However, if memory serves me, the average north american feels between 360 and 640 millerem annually (depending on whether or not you smoke). A rem is 0.01 Sievert, so 360 millirem = 3.6 mSv. There are about 8760 hours / year, which gives about 0.0004 mSv/hr. (Did I screw anything up there?)
However, the most important thing in my mind is that the wearer of the watch will become very aware of just how pervasive and natural a small amount of radiation really is. Maybe if everyone wore one, we wouldn't have the misinformed paranoia that accompanies the word "radioactive"
In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
Well, that watch isnt exactly new.... its sold on this website for way less Actually only 337.20 Here is the link: http://pro-resources.net/watch.htm
I'm at the cap, I'll give you some, just don't post misinformation.
Professional dosimeters have an average accuracy of +/- 10%.
25% is not considered bad, especially as these are not meant to be used for inspections. From the website:
Our aim is to help various professionals measure and control the radiation dosis they may be exposed to in a convenient, discreet and continuous way. These professionals can be radiologists, dentists, medical staff, nuclear power plant staff, waste professionals, military, customs and for those who want to know!
For uses such as these, +/-25% is definately accurate enough.
You could have gotten free karma much easier if you posted that their technical page contained the following: * all data may be subject to change without notice
Now THAT is a reason for worry.
Too bad thats not how radiation works. If you ever were near a large source of radiation your own clothes would absorb radiation and keep it coming to your body. One of the most important parts of a nuclear fallout shelter is the entrance room where you take off ALL clothing and shower. Your clothes and aything else you wear if you were near a nuclear explosion would continue the damage if not taken off immediatly.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
This would have been nice to know about before Christmas...
Very cool. One feature I'd like to see in the next version of this watch is some sort of hook-up to a computer that would let you record good data on long-term exposure. Still, I want one of these.
As far as measuring your total dosage goes, I might as well take this opportunity to inform everyone that government mandated radiation standards are mostly erroneous. By orders of magnitude even. We now know that low-level radiation is simply far less harmful (and far better understood) than we thought it was in the 1950's. Major reason is that the 1950's model is simply a straight line extrapolation from the known lethal dosage. Back then, that was a reasonable guess considering the knowledge of genetics at the time. Needless to say, our current understanding is quite different.
5-25 rad: No observable effects.
25-75 rad: Chromosomal aberrations and temporary depression of white blood cell levels in some individuals. No externally observable effects.
75-200 rad: Vomiting in 5 to 50% of exposed individuals within a few hours. Fatigue and loss of appetite. Moderate blood changes. Recovery within a few weeks.
200-600 rad: For doses over 300 rem, all exposed individuals will exhibit vomiting within 2 hours and loss of hair after 2 weeks. Severe blood changes with hemorrhage and increased susceptibility to infection, particularly at higher doses. Recovery from 1 to 12 months for individuals at the lower end of the dose range; only 20 percent survive at the upper end of the range.
600-1000 rad: Vomiting within 1 hour, sever blood changes, hemorrhage, infection, and loss of hair. From 80 to 100% of exposed individuals will succumb within 2 months; those who survive will be convalescent over a long period.
Introduction to Nuclear Engineering (Lamarshe)
If it's a new one (say 1999 or newer) that complies with the TCO spec then it's basically none. It's a very stringent spec on EM emissions and you really won't find much comming from your monitor. Even older monitors tend to comply to the MPR II spec, which is very low emission (not as low as TCO, but still).
Also, we are talking EM radiation here, not nuclear. There is a difference.
What is with all you hippies? There will never be a time when we all have to commute in haz-mat suits driving airtight cars with their own oxygen source... There may be enough neuclear force to destroy the world, but even nations as angry and stupid as North Korea or Iraq wouldn't do THAT much damage... Sure it is possible that in the future we will have to worry about bombs destroying our homes or something... but it will be a while before and take a lot to come to nuclear war.
Another thing to know, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they can live and walk freely even today with very little above-normal exposure to radiation. Radiation dissipates fairly fast if it isn't continually agitated by further radiation.
You will have to worry about having to walk around with a sunscreen-sprinkler continually protecting you from a hole in the ozone layer (which by the way has been shrinking steadily since 2000 as was told here on slashdot) before you have to worry about a fallout (the game) like scenario.
Erutangis ym si siht.
The radiation detectors doctors wear aren't real time detectors - the watch is.
TCO-99 is a very restrictive specification that not only deals with radiation and emission levels, it also specifies ergonomics. It is for instance considered harmful to have a black border around the viewing area - this has almost killed off sales of black or dark gray monitors. They are almost always TCO-95 spec, even if they meet all the other TCO-99 requirements.
TCO is The Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees (basically, a white-collar trade union) that thinks about workplace ergonomics and how to keep their members alive and healthy.
Money for nothing, pix for free
You said: " Too bad thats not how radiation works. If you ever were near a large source of radiation your own clothes would absorb radiation and keep it coming to your body. One of the most important parts of a nuclear fallout shelter is the entrance room where you take off ALL clothing and shower. Your clothes and aything else you wear if you were near a nuclear explosion would continue the damage if not taken off immediatly.
Your description of radiation and contamination is a little hairy, let me clean it up:
Radiation is the propogation of energy over a distance via waves. Some types of radiation are (using the example of a nuclear bomb): neutrons (very hazardous--you need to be in a deep fallout shelter or surrounded by a significant amount of water to protect you), alphas (very hazardous--are shielded by your skin, but if they are emitted inside your lungs you are in trouble), betas (minor hazard--shielded by your clothing, not a real problem unless ingested or inhaled), EM radiation in general (the frequency; therefore, the energy of the photon is of prime concern: a radio wave will probably not hurt you but a high energy gamma will--shielded by being in a fallout shelter as long as its deep enough), and non-interacting (like neutrinos--you don't have to worry about these, they can't hurt you). This watch will detect gammas and maybe some other high energy EM radiation (neutrons require larger detection devices, and alphas and betas would be shielded by the metal of the watch). I doubt it can detect as low energy as x-rays, but it might.
Contamination is getting radioactive material on you. This radioactive material will undergo decays producing radiation. You take your clothes off and shower to remove the contamination so you don't get irradiated.
Radiation (with the exception of neutrons and alphas) does not beget long term radiation (longer than for example a gamma to be absorbed by an atom and re-emit a lower energy gamma). Its just absorbed and thats the end of it. Neutrons and alphas will typically not beget long term radiation because of the specialized conditions required (causing fission of an atom and releasing radioactive products or being absorbed and transmuting an atom into a radioactive isotope). The contamination on your skin and clothes will be due to fallout (i.e. radioactive material) from the nuclear weapon, not the radiation.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Of course, you might end up on Ton's list of people with dangerous equipment and as we know, what is Tony's, is also George's.
See this page for sources of geiger counters in the UK.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Unless this is recent, this is just wrong. People are allowed to own Geiger Counters. Why wouldn't they be?
Maplin used to sell a kit until a few years ago to make one. Second hand militaty units are available on many sites. Scientific suppliers often carry them.
Also, a dosimeter is a different device to a Geiger counter. Is the watch still illegal?
I should imagine that if this were like anything else, then dealers would get in a lot more trouble than the buyer, and I have never heard of that happening.
Also, we are talking EM radiation here, not nuclear. There is a difference.
Yeah, it's unclear what the original poster thinks that he's going to be getting "nuked" by.
Actually, several kinds of radiation leave a monitor, though it's only the last two that tend to cause worry:
X-rays are ionizing radiation and are known to be carcinogenic and mutagenic. They're essentially man-made gamma rays. Geiger counters do tend to count them, though it depends on their energy.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Actually, the old "film badges" have largely been replaced by devices called thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLDs). They are made of a material which, when struck by radiation, goes into a metastable excited state. The badge is processed by heating it up, causing the molecules that had been excited to drop back to the ground state. In the process, a photon is emitted, which is detected by a photomultiplier tube. Your radiation dose is proportional to the number of photons counted. The advantages of a TLD over a film badge are that it tends to more precise for very small doses, it can be processed faster if you have the equipment on-site, and it's reusable.