Radiation level anomaly back in 2009 in Turkey, questions rise

Hi ATSers,

I've been mostly reading and discussing other threads before but its my first thread. So please bare with me if I make any mistakes.

After the Japan Nuclear Crisis I've been looking for Turkish Government Atomic Institute (TAEK) website to catch up with the radiation levels in air around Turkey. But I saw that the data shown has not been updated since 24 July 2009, 11:01 (Thou it says the data is monitored 24 hours a day and updated on the website in an hourly basis but its not updated since July, 2009)


If you see the Turkey map from the link I mentioned, you will see some high levels on different cities. To make it short, lets take the highest 3 data shown between cities are:

Balikesir - 185 nSv/h
Gumushane - 143 nSv/h
Kars - 140 nSv/h

I've counted 8-9 cities above the safe limit in the map total and they are not located in the same region. Totally in different parts of the country. Which I converted and calculated the safe limits as 114.15 nSv/h (I explained my calculation below).

And this data shown in the map is in nanoservierts per hour (nSv/h).

When I checked the annual average dose safe limits from McGill University Environment and Safety dept. website on Radiation Dose Limit in the specific topic named '3.6 NON-RADIATION WORKERS AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC' and I saw:

The legal dose limit for non-radiation workers and members of public (i.e. everyone except NEWs) is 1 mSv (100 mrem) per annum

So when I tried convert this level from mSv/year to nSv/hour.

First I have converted mSv to nSv with this calculator which showed that 1mSv equals to 1,000,000 nSv

I divided 1,000,000 nSv/year dose to 365 days to get the daily dose, which is 2,739.72 nSv/day and then divided it to 24 to get the hourly dose which gave me a 114.15 nSv/h as a safe dose limit. (I'm not sure if this straight basic calculation of mine is also correct in radiation level terms)

When I compared the safe limit with the data collected on several cities mentioned above, I see that they are above the limit. Since the data is from July, 2009 and considering there were no radiation or nuclear danger at that time, I was surprised to see the levels seemed interestingly above the safe limit, yet shown with green to indicate that it is safe.

So questions rise;

1- Why the levels are above the safe limit in normal conditions and they are all shown in green (which I assume is pointing that is it safe)?

2- Is there are other countries that has a higher level data than the safe limit in a normal condition?

3- What might cause these spikes in the radiation levels in a country that has no Nuclear Reactors or anything related to radiation?

Please consider that there are NONE nuclear reactors in Turkey until now and those datas are from different parts from the country, it just seems not normal to me. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Thank you, and again, I'm sorry If I made any mistakes.

eurdepweb.jrc.ec.europa.eu...

check this link/map safe limits at right side of page

reply to post by aytacaksel


I wasn't aware of this website, yet its giving realtime data Thank you. I have also found more recent update on data at TAEK dated 14.04.2011-14:30

But still, there is no explanation about the situation I have written on this thread and I'm still curious about what could it be.

Sorry guys it seems that my straight calculation is somewhat wrong according to Wiki

Wiki gives (I don't believe Wiki is reliable, and I don't like referencing from Wiki but here it is)

Average individual background radiation dose: 0.23μSv/h

See: en.wikipedia.org...

So 0.23μSv/h equals to 230 nSv/h according to this calculator so the levels mentioned in this thread are under the safe limits.

Also I found this article about comparing yearly natural background radiation to radiation levels in hourly basis being meaningless

I don't know if the guy written this is a science guy or not. So these infos should not be considered as proven. (Both the guy in the article and Wiki) I just wanted to drop the info I found.

and I also bumped into several different websites (official government websites and nuclear research websites) stating that the annual natural background radiation dose is 2mSv/yr and some say 3mSv/yr for an individual.. So it seems that some state this and some state that, and yet, safe dose limit is somehow stated as 1mSv/y everywhere weird to me.

Anyway I think this topic is dead already until someone finds and picks up something interesting about these numbers. Until that time take care everyone.

You missed some explanation of levels. Natural levels of radiation can vary up to 300-400 nanosiverts = 0,3-0,4 microsiverts and depend on altitude and content of earth minerals in this place - if you have uranium ore or other radioactive minerals, you get higher level. In high altitude places you get high levels too.
And in Balikesir you have air force base, may be there was US tactical nuclear weapons in the past and left traces of radiation...