[Geysers] Re: Radioactive rodents on the Pitchstone

[TSBryan at aol.com]

I clearly recall having had a paper, published somewhere sometime like  
maybe 30 years ago, that cited PLANTS from down around Polecat Creek (and so,  
southeast Pitchstone area) radioactive enough to leave images on film.  
Seems to me one of the plants was a locoweed. I've looked several places around  
this mess and cannot find the article -- sorry. Not my field so I  could be 
wrong, but would plants be more likely to absorb this amount of  
radioactive stuff?
 
Scott Bryan
 
 
In a message dated 4/10/2011 5:53:00 A.M. US Mountain Standard Time,  
canbelto at gmail.com writes:

This has  apparently been studied at least slightly, and another paper is 
by R. Howald  (or Howlad, sources differ), "'N22 HOWALD, Reed Montana state 
University  Radioactivity from Pitchstone Plateau area of YNP.' 1982", cited 
in the YNP  archives, as reached by 
_http://www.nps.gov/yell/historyculture/upload/natural.pdf_ 
(http://www.nps.gov/yell/historyculture/upload/natural.pdf)   -- Lee W may have easier and more complete access to this than the 
rest of  us.

This gets pretty close to what I do for a living (or did before I  became a 
useless paper pusher...), and I'd like to learn more of what actually  
happened in this study and any others like it.  The notion of radioactive  
critters fogging photographic film seems far-fetched, to put it mildly.   
However, naturally-occurring potassium contains about 1% K-40, a long-lived  
radioactive isotope easily detected with modern sensors (and the bane of us  folks 
who do low-level detection because it's in natural background and you  
can't get rid of it).  K-40 is therefore present in living things in tiny  
quantities, whether on the Pitchstone Plateau or elsewhere.   Really long 
exposures would be necessary to see it on photographic  film, though.  Radon in 
rodents is not a credible source of photographic  film fogging for various 
reasons.

One of the pages that cites that  Howald (Howlad? Howard) study says 
something to the effect that the basalts of  the Pitchstone Plateau contain "two 
to three times" as much radioactivity as  rocks elsewhere at YNP.  To this, 
all that I can say is "big deal."   There are any number of places in the 
world where you can get in a car and  drive for five minutes, and produce 
order-of-magnitude variations in natural  background; I live in one of them 
(Jemez Mountains of New Mexico) which just  happens to have geology very similar 
to YNP.

This whole thing strikes  me as much ado about nothing, but the scientist 
in me is interested in  learning more about it, just out of curiosity.  Other 
links  appreciated.

-- Bill, speaking only for himself.

On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 8:46 PM, Ruth & Leslie Quinn  
<_ruthleslie.ynp at gmail.com_ (mailto:ruthleslie.ynp at gmail.com) >  wrote:


I found the source  where I think the original paper on this subject is 
located.  It's:
Linn, Robert M., editor, Proceedings of  the 1st Conference on Scientific 
Research in the National  Parks (U. S. Department of the Interior, U. S. 
Government Printing  Office, Washington, DC, 1976, 2 volumes, 1325 pages). I 
don't recall exactly  where in there the paper is, but I'm pretty sure I saw it 
in there once upon  a time.
Leslie Quinn
 


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