Proposal: require by law that if commercially available sensors, below a certain size/power consumption and of reasonable cost (say $5, adjusted for inflation), can meet the requirements, all cell phone manufacturers must install the sensors for phones sold in the United States.
The basic requirements would be for :
(a) an accumulating sensor able to detect chronic radiation exposure to gamma rays sufficient to significantly raise cancer rates
(b) an immediate-term sensor, able to distinguish and alert the user for levels of radiation:
a. 50% fatal within about a month
b. 50% fatal within a day
c. 50% fatal within an hour
It can just peg after case c.
Precision would not be a major requirement, merely a 95% probability that the sensor shows an alert before the levels for a,b, and c are reached in a test lab.
Thought of this watching the HBO show Chernobyl. If the firefighter’s all had phones, which would all go off with shrill warnings when they approached the reactor building, they would have survived. Similarly, people have died from radioactive isotopes hidden in chairs and radon in their basement and other secret sources.
The sensors, in 100 million unit volumes, would probably be quite affordable, but it’s not a feature that a cell phone manufacturer individually be able to put in the phone since it provides the user no immediately tangible benefit.
Aside from the greatest nuclear disasters of our day, do any measurable fraction of cell phone users ever come into contact with lethal levels of radiation? Is there some crisis I haven’t heard about? I could understanding having a big, ol’ box of these kind of sensors by the entrance to every plant so emergency personnel could clip one on as they walked in the door, but I don’t think somebody’s aunt in Topeka needs this…
There’s a major flaw in your reasoning here, the belief that had those firefighters received such a warning they would have refused to fight the fires. Some might have done that, but in past emergencies a certain number of people have displayed a willingness to give their lives to save others. Faced with a situation where in order to bring an out-of-control disaster under control there probably would have been some people who went ahead and sacrificed themselves for the common good.
Sounds like a solution in search of a problem to me. How often are people accidentally wandering into irradiated areas that we need to put Geiger counters in hundreds of millions of devices?
I think there are a number of other features that would be more useful for cell phones to be required to have - such as (off the top of my head)
Ability to operate in a network with other cell phones without cell towers in emergency situations. This would allow cell phones to remain useful when cell towers are disabled by loss of electricity.
Carbon Monoxide sensors (a bigger problem than radiation)
Mandating radiation detectors for all cell phones would produce a large number of conspiracy theories about why Congress was expecting this to become useful too a large number of people, which would be amusing.
P.S. For people such as fire-fighters or other emergency personnel who have a higher than usual likelihood of running into radiation, special purpose detectors made for those people are probably a better idea.
I worked with a guy whose graduate advisor helped put out Chernobyl. It killed him (slowly). He thought it would when he did it. He didn’t really have a choice. He was ordered to do it. And if he hadn’t, a lot more people would have died. The impression I got was that he was a reluctant and disgruntled hero.
But a radiation detector wouldn’t have helped. It was a nuclear power plant. He knew he was screwed.
Dunno, but the sensor specs above would cause it to only go off in fairly high radiation fields to prevent such nuisance trips. Also, sensors like this would be rather crucial to surviving nuclear fallout, just saying. (assuming the survivors are keeping their phones charged with generators or portable solar panels, and pulling spare phones from deceased victims of the nuclear attack)
Over 200 million cell phones are sold in the US each year. Using your number, that’s $1 billion per year we’d be spending on radiation sensors on our phones. Do you really think that’s the most useful thing we can spend $1 billion a year on?
I just checked Digikey, and this is the cheapest CO detector at $6 each. It’s 17.5mm diameter and 14mm tall (not including the pins), and consumes 0.35W. Forget it, nobody would want that in a phone.
I am imaging a field full of screaming cellphone alarms attached to the hips of people frantically digging holes to duck into.
I’m not sure how such a sensor is going to help you survive nuclear fallout, particularly for the higher ranges. There are only two even slightly reasonable responses to that situation, the first being leave the radioactive area immediately and the second being get into a shielded bunker. In the case of a nuclear attack finding a means to leave the affected area is going to be difficult at best. Fallout shelters have issues regarding both adequate stocking with supplies and/or human waste disposal (think of several weeks of piss, shit, and possibly other bodily effluvia like vomit and contaminated clothing brought inside when you enterede when you can’t afford radiation exposure to take it outside and have to find some way to store it inside with you.)
For that sort of situation a dosimeter might actually be more useful than simply a gieger counter. Knowing one’s accumulated dose in some ways is more useful than knowing the current hazard. Multiple accumulated doses in a short period of time can be deadly, even if no one dose is super high.
This actually makes a LOT more sense… except for the expense and technically issues involved in adding those to modern cellphones. Might be a nice option for some.
Such a system would have had no real effect in Chernobyl, and would make even less sense in the US where fire-fighters who might respond to emergencies at nuclear plants undoubtedly have training in special procedures.
And if they don’t, then training them in special procedures would be a better investment than equipping every cell phone with a radiation meter.
The biggest problem with the idea is, it gives the public the false impression that radiation is a big risk to their lives. Which will lead the public into worrying about radiation when the effort is better spent worrying about other risks. Improperly washed vegetables kill way more people than radiation, for example. Or choosing not to get a flu vaccine.
I’m not suggesting that we should be required to have radiation sensors on our cell phones, but to give a partial answer to your question, the EPA’s best estimate for deaths due to radon induced lung cancer is 21,000 per year.
The situation you describe is one where the Geiger counter is more useful than a dosimeter. As you correctly point out, you want to avoid the radiation, but can’t sit in your shelter forever. Survival then becomes a game of “eat the least contaminated stuff” (admittedly, you’d ideally want a device that can tell you what radioactive isotope you are about to ingest) and “don’t step on the radiation hot spot”. Further fun questions that a Geiger counter can answer: Will I have less or more radioactive stuff on my hands when I wash them in this pool of water? and When is the right time to use the last dust filter for my gas mask?
That’s what I was generally thinking. Also, the regularly available ones, which are extremely rare and hard to find, tend to saturate at far too low a radiation level to be useful for survival. There is a substantial difference between “fatal in a month if I stay here” and “fatal in an hour”.
If I got a dose of radiation that would kill me in a month, I think I would know about it without checking my phone. So your idea seems a little over-designed.