RadNet And Why It Matters

RadNet is a near-real-time monitoring system that keeps track of the nation's air, water, and soil radiation content. It has over 135 active air monitors and has at least one base in every U.S. state as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

The graphic above is a depiction of terrestrial radiation dosage rates across the North American continent. RadNet captures this data along with countless other forms of radiation exposure data with its expansive monitoring system.

The EPA is kind enough (and legally obligated enough) to share the data they recover publicly on their frustratingly labyrinthian website. This data is very valuable to me because the less data I have to personally retrieve, the better (also their data is more likely to be accurate based on their expertise and prior experience).

The EPA is a government department and as such uses U.S. customary units as opposed to metric units. This means that the vast majority of their data is recorded in units that aren't the same as the rest of the scientific community's. It isn't a major problem, but switching to the metric system, as they soon will be, is a smart route to follow.

I will be addressing this most tedious topic of units in an upcoming post.