New radiation detectors offer peace of mind

Members of the bomb squad from the Franklin County sheriff’s office hope their new radiation detectors, small enough to hook onto a belt, never have anything dangerous to detect.

“This is one of those things you spend the money on hoping it will never be used,”

Maj. Carl Hickey said.

“People won’t even know it’s around, but it will help keep them protected,” he said of the 24 new radiation detectors, costing a total of $66,000.

Radiation is all around us, most of it easily blocked by our skin. But in high concentrations,

it can sicken or kill. That means law enforcement officers and other first responders need to know when radiation is present, at what levels and the danger it poses.

“In the wrong hands, in the wrong concentrations, bad people can do bad things with” radioactive materials, Hickey said.

The radiation detectors that the sheriff’s office is replacing

are old, bulky and unpopular.

“They don’t really work now,” Hickey said. “The technology has increased so much. What we have now isn’t even worth getting out of the box.”

The new detectors are pager-size and can be hooked onto a user’s belt. That belies the heightened level of sophistication of the devices. They can detect

not only the levels of radiation but also the likely source of it, such as from medical or industrial applications. They can detect radiation levels from people undergoing medical treatment or from briefcase nuclear bombs.

That’s important for first responders such as the sheriff’s bomb squad and the Columbus Division of Fire, which use the devices at truck and train crashes and at events that attract large crowds, such as college football games and Red, White & Boom.

While it’s unlikely the detectors will ever detect a nuclear device, they do come across potentially dangerous radiation used in industries involving recycling, scrap metal, pharmaceuticals and well-drilling.

“We use them to kind of eliminate things,” Columbus Firefighter Eric Norman said of the detectors. “We can use these to rule out different types of radiation.”

Norman and fellow members of the fire department’s hazardous materials squad rely on the detectors most often in truck or train crashes.

“They’re transporting stuff across the country all the time,” Norman said. “If we have an unknown cargo and we don’t know what’s in it and we can’t get to the paperwork, this would be something that we would possibly use to check to see what was in that truck.”

Medicine is among the most common sources of elevated radiation, and detectors are set off by people who recently have undergone radiation treatment or by medical waste.

“We do get some radiation hits,” said Scott Perry, director of operations for the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio, operator of the landfill. “We’ve never had anything serious.”

Most of the 10 or so radiation hits per year at the landfill, Perry said, are because of “dirty adult diapers from chemo patients, cancer patients.”

SWACO is one of the few landfills in Ohio using radiation detectors.

“We want to make sure there’s nobody trying to sneak a large amount of radioactive material into the landfill,” Perry said.