Health Canada expands research collaboration with SNOLAB

SUDBURY: This year, Health Canada added two new radiological monitoring stations at SNOLAB’s surface facility at Creighton Mine in Lively, ON.

The two new stations are additions to the Radiation Protection Bureau (RPB) of Health Canada’s environmental radiation monitoring program. Through this national program, Health Canada monitors and assesses both natural and human-caused radiation in the environment, in order to help Canadians understand and manage their health risks. The program is made up of two networks, the Fixed Point Surveillance Network (FPSN), and the Canadian Radiological Monitoring Network (CRMN).

The FPSN was launched in 2002 after the terrorist attacks in the United States. The network provides real-time data from strategic locations across Canada to support Canada’s national monitoring system and the Federal Nuclear Emergency Plan.

SNOLAB’s FPSN is one of over 100 fixed point detectors monitoring radiation doses in real-time across Canada. Each detector generates a data set every 15 minutes and millions of measurements every year across the country.  Results are publicly available in real time on Open Maps.

In operation since 1959, the CRMN collects air particulate, precipitation, and water vapour samples at various sites across the country, which are then measured in the RPB lab in Ottawa. SNOLAB’s CRMN is one of 30 dedicated radiological monitoring stations also across Canada, providing weekly air, deposition, and dosimeter data. (A dosimeter is an instrument used to measure ionizing radiation exposure.) SNOLAB’s scientific support staff oversee weekly monitoring at the Sudbury station. SNOLAB staff ships the air filter and precipitation samples to Health Canada in Ottawa, while dosimeter samples are shipped every four months.

The data from both these networks have helped to establish long-term trends in environmental radioactivity from natural contributions. With the continuous monitoring, RPB is able to identify radioactivity generated by human activities such as historical fallout, nuclear power generation, medical isotope production, and international nuclear or radiological incidents. RPB aims to help Canadians understand sources of ionizing radiation in their surroundings and to make informed decisions to manage their exposure.

The radiological monitoring station builds on Health Canada’s existing partnership with SNOLAB’s underground Low Background Counting Facility.

“Together with the help of various research institutions, SNOLAB is excited to help Health Canada improve their understanding of environmental radiation,” says Jeter Hall, SNOLAB’s Director of Research. “SNOLAB maintains Germanium counters, radon counters, and even maintains a materials radioactivity data repository to better understand sources of radiation.”

For example, SNOLAB will sometimes perform gamma counting of the air filters at SNOLAB’s clean surface lab, to increase the number of isotopes that can be measured. SNOLAB can measure gamma radiation more sensitively than surface laboratories, Hall says.

The Radiation Protection Bureau welcomes this collaboration and hopes to better integrate SNOLAB’s capacity in Health Canada’s testing and analysis.