Cell phone sensors detect radiation to thwart nuclear terrorism

Researchers at Purdue University are working on a way to use the ubiquitous cell phone as a tool against nuclear terrorism.

By building a tiny, commercially available radiation sensor into a handset they've been able to add the ability to detect radioactive sources more than 15 feet away. Since cell phones are now locationally aware, they can program them to filter out non-threatening sources and use the signals from multiple cell phones to pinpoint the location of a threat. And since urban centers tend to have higher concentrations of handsets you would automatically have the most sensitivity in the most likely targets for terrorist attack.

According to the researchers the system would be very effective because it is impossible to completely shield a radiological weapon with out making it too heavy to transport.

They claim that the tiny sensors are sensitive enough to detect the residue on people who have recently handled radioactive materials, and even bananas (because of their potassium content), so they would be programed to only alert the authorities about sources above a certain threshold.

One question that comes to my mind - I have a friend that recently when through radiation therapy and then took a day trip into Canada. When they got to the border crossing they caused a bit of a ruckus because the guards also have radiation detectors and said that they could see him coming from 20 feet away. Hopefully they would also be able to filter out this type of scenario so we don't end up constantly harassing cancer patients.

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