This means that certified industrial hygienists and anyone else wanting to question the government's or industry wisdom will be in a database that can be FISA matched. That's probably the end game.

Does this mean that you'd have to get a license to have a smoke or carbon monoxide detector in your house?

Does this mean that you'd have to get a license to have a smoke or carbon monoxide detector in your house?

god, that's disturbing.

This is a move to solve a non-existent problem; not once has there been false alarms from private rad counters in New York, and there is even less possible justification for restricting atmospheric detectors. I can't help but think that this is some form of delayed payback to all of those environmental scientists that called bullshit on the EPA's false claims that the 9/11 air was safe to breath. Many thousands of our brave firefighters and police officers are now dying because they were not given the proper equipment for the rescue/cleanup effort, and now our leaders want to make sure that if something similar happens again, we won't know why. It is criminal to hide data from the public, and it is criminal to impede scientific research that is in the public interest.

I effin hate the govt and retards that think up dumb laws like this. Jeez 9-11 turned (some of ) us into a nation of security crazy ostriches. Down with DHS.

"The purpose of the bill is to reduce unwarranted anxiety and damage from false alarms of terrorist attacks."
So:
How many false alarms?
How much damage?
How much anxiety?
and how have these false alarms been kept so quiet!
The Department of Homeland Security is a very worrying beast.

May I just point out that "Evidently the right to bear arms is in the constitution but the right to know what is in the air is not. " is a statement to inspire reaction. You have to get a license to legally own a weapon in the US. So the whole license part of your issue is a moot point.
As far as the whole government conspiracy to keep us from knowing the content of the air ... well, get a license and keep the data. Publish it on the web where information has a tendency to be believed without evidence.

"at the suggestion of the Department of Homeland Security"...

I suspect their real agenda might be to have a database of individuals who buy monitoring devices, because some career DoHS 'expert' figures it's a suspicious enough purchase to warrant (not in this case, ha!) a closer peek.

Yes, ... try to bear arms, LEGALLY, in New York City and you have another thing coming. I think a pistol permit is like $350 and the application fee is non-refundable, so if you have an overdue parking ticket, you can't get a pistol to defend yourself when your home is invaded. Oh yes, if and when you do get one (after an 8 month wait processing the appilcation), you have to renew every 3 years(?) and pony up another $300 or so.
Don't forget the gun has to be kept in a locked box with ammunition stored separately. The worst thing you can do is ... hit someone over the head with the locked box. Then you will probably get sued for violating some mugger's 'civil rights'.

As far as the instruments go, don't the detection devices contain a minute amount of radioactive material themselves? I am guessing.
As they say, "follow the money". So it is probably the government looking to get some more $$ from application fees.

You could just see the dark humor 911 call ...

"...yes this is Joe Citizen and I have a detector going off saying there's some Saran or VX gas nearby!"
"Hey buddy, you got a license for that thing!?!".

I'm not 100% sure on Scintillators, but a geiger counter does not contain any radioactive material unless some was included for calibration. I've got some gieger tubes at home, and they are just a thin envelope filled with a grid and a low-pressure gas. A lot of smoke detectors contain Americanium, an actual radioactive material, be it a low-level alpha particle emitter.

Detectors do not contain any radioactive materials. This includes G-M tubes, gas proportionals, scintillators, and semiconductor detectors. YOU are more radioactive than the detectors themselves, so that conspiracy theory is quashed.

AMERICIUM-241 is the material in smoke detectors, no need to make up elemental names. http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/chart/decaysearchdirect.jsp?nuc=241AM&unc=nds
for a complete decay scheme.

You can make your own ion chamber with a metal pin, a metal tube and an applied voltage, so I don't see how this absurd idea is even enforcible.

Using their own logic:

Having a Department of Homeland Security, has led to unwarranted anxiety and damage from false alarms of terrorist attacks.

So obviously, we should abolish it.

"Purdue University engineers are developing a system which would use a U.S. network of cellphones to detect dirty bombs and nuclear weapons. They say that 'such a system could blanket the nation with millions of cellphones equipped with radiation sensors able to detect even light residues of radioactive material.'"

http://www.primidi.com/2008/01/23.html#a2075

In the early 1990s, I was involved with the citizens' radiation monitoring networks around nuclear power plants. At that time, there were affordable, accurate, handheld geiger counters available.

This NYC ordinance is ridiculous.

What would help clarify this whole issue would be some books written by physicists in cojunction worker's rights professionals as to the history and modern uses of heavy metals. radioactive substances and similar. According to the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, uraninite is "highly readioactive" and was mined starting in the 18th Cenutry in the African Congo, Ontario, Canada and in S.W. of the USA. No mention of uses. Further, smoke detectors that use Americur... have 85% alpha, 8% gamma and the rest unknown. In my surfing I found, some think jobs go overseas to cover up the toxic mess--so people do not find out. One chat site person wrote that he visited a cadmium factory in China and it was not a pretty site. Another chat person from Finland wrote his wife died of brain cancer from use of halogen bulbs for two years. When I checked on the nternet I found that some halogen bulbs do contain trace amounts of radioactive material. I do not see how consumer affairs can do a good job with not having much information, misinformation and conflicting data to work with. I do not understand why geiger counters are not sold in superstores and electronics stores, etc. Kitty litter is supposedly radioactive and some cats are known to get leukemia--related? Besides the potential negative impact on people--what is the stuff doing to birds, butterflies, etc. Seems odd that there is not much literature on this issue.

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