Fukushima radiation in Missouri snow?

[coppertales]

Grew up in the 50s with all that above ground nuke testing.  No one worried about radiation in the snow then.  Now days, if you have an old watch with the radium dial, you are considered a radiation hazard.....chris3

[230RN]

Thanks, Brad Johnson, for that graph on solar activity in that period.  I guess the thing to do is check for similar spikes in other cities over that time period, but I'm too lazy to do that.  (By the way, shouldn't the OP's "59 counts per minute" have been "59 counts per second?")

I reckon that while normal variations in background radiation are not much to get wet-your-pants panicy about, there are instances where ignorance (or coverups) have led to deaths, with both radioactive substances and other things.

The radium watch-dial painters and Madame Curie come to mind.  I don't know about the other radiation pioneers... like for instance, did Becquerel have any problems after he x-rayed his hand?

Asbestos also comes to  mind, and possibly PCBs (Polychlorinated biphenyl),

Then there's the unprovable but highly suspicious deaths of so many of the participants involved in filming the movie  "The Conqueror" with John Wayne and Susan Hayward:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conqueror_(film)#Cancer_controversy

So I'm not going to wet my own pants about somebody finding "radioactive snow," but on the other hand, it's something to tag for "keeping an eye on."

Terry, 230RN

[MillCreek]

Grew up in the 50s with all that above ground nuke testing.  No one worried about radiation in the snow then.  Now days, if you have an old watch with the radium dial, you are considered a radiation hazard.....chris3

Here in Washington, there have been lots of media stories over the years about the 'Downwinders': people who lived by the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and were exposed to high levels of radioactive contamination, and the health problems thereto.

[Hawkmoon]

I don't know why there hasn't been very much coverage of a real Fukushima radiation story. That being our own CVN-76 sailed around for a few days in the radioactive steam plume, all the while making water from contaminated water. Now there are crewmembers with some serious health problems. This is a nuclear powered ship, hundreds of TLDs running around (they are read after the fact I know), a robust radiation safety program, designed to survive for awhile at least in an NBC environment and that''s the best we could do?

Same reason there wasn't discussion of Agent Orange during (and for a very long time after) the Vietnam interlude: the U.S. dot-gov doesn't wish to accept responsibility for poisoning its military personnel. If they stonewall it, it never happened.