Portable Geiger Counter?

[ErikJ]

Thom Hartmann said last week he had a geiger counter he carried with him after Chernobyl when he was living in Germany in 1986 and used it to measure radioactivity of foods in the grocery store. He said the nuts, milk and something else always set it off loudly. (which the store owners hated-"those crazy Americans again!")

Does anybody know a good rather inexpensive portable geiger counter to buy and where to get it?

[SoCalDem]

1. ebay

[Throckmorton]

4. If you buy one on e-bay

Make sure it has been calibrated and certified to a NIST standard (or your country of origins standards lab). There are a lot of "Reconditioned" cold war era Geiger Counters for sale, some of which are approaching 50 years old. Also, be sure to get one that reads in Milli rems (or Micro Severts)per hour, there are a lot of Survey Meters that only read in 100/mR per hour and higher (Really not very useful except in the post-apocalyptic environment).

[wtbymark]

2. good luck right about now

All of the american makers are 'out of stock'
ebay? well i saw one that sells for $380, still has 3 days left on the auction for %600 (new digital monitor 4)

if you can handle reading microseverts in russian, there are a few moderately priced ones

[Ian David]

3. Build Your Own Geiger Counter

Build Your Own Geiger Counter
http://www.imagesco.com/articles/geiger/01.html

Also:

http://www.instructables.com/community/How-to-make-a-Geiger-Counter/

http://www.ehow.com/how_5005665_build-geiger-counter.html

[MineralMan]

5. Geiger counters are pretty much back-ordered everywhere right now.

There's never a large supply, and people have bought up the current supply. There are no inexpensive ones.