Tuesday, September 16, 2014

A call for Citizen Scientists that suits paddlers well!

Louise spotted this call for volunteer Citizen Scientists, and passed it along to me. It will be of particular interest to paddlers living along Canada's west coast and Haida Gwai, in communities like Hartley Bay.
InFORM is a non-governmental organization of universities, groups, Health Canada, and citizens gathering data on the radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan during 2011. They're listed on their website as 
Integrated Fukushima Ocean Radionuclide Monitoring (InFORM) Network: 
A collaborative radiation monitoring network to determine and communicate environmental risks for Canada’s Pacific and Arctic Oceans from the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident

I'll just add the note here, if the word "radiation" is giving you the willies, that everything I've heard (from newspapers, science journals, and the University of Victoria) says that while some radiation from Fukushima did reach Canada, it was only in very small amounts, measured and tracked. This call for volunteer Citizen Scientists is part of a program to keep gathering water samples to test. 
It's a great thing to know that our scientists are continuing to measure the tiny amounts of Cesium that drifted across the Pacific. There's not enough radiation to be a threat to our health, so we paddlers can take to the water with confidence.

No comments:

Post a Comment