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2 Comments

  1. Ken Buesseler on March 8, 2021 at 3:43 pm

    A lot of good lessons here in your “Findings” section. Can you comment a bit more on the learning aspect of involving the public in radiation monitoring. I’ve certainly found that when people are participating in sampling, they are more eager to learn more, so monitoring, especially when it involves participation, is a valuable teaching tool. From your photos, it looks like you reached many different groups.



    • Louise Elstow on March 10, 2021 at 1:43 pm

      Hi Ken – Thanks for your comment.

      Absolutely – I think that once people are actively involved in data collection it changes the relationship they have with the data involved. I could also see that sometimes the active participation in data collection helped those individuals feel more ownership over the data, and what it meant. By active participation in data and knowledge creation you become intrinsically aware of the limitations and context of the production of the data, what it might be relied upon to mean and what you might do with it as well. And as you mention, monitoring is a great tool in terms of educating people about how they might go about interpreting other data sources and paying attention to data and measurements over time. Also it was clear in some cases that people were participating in data collection via measuring and monitoring, but that the primary aim was about community participation rather than data gathering per se.