Health Canada is adding nine more radiation monitoring stations in B.C. to check for any fallout from damaged Japanese nuclear power plants.
There are already six stations in B.C. Dr. Paul Gully, senior medical health advisor with Health Canada, says the 15 stations will provide continuous information on radiation levels in the air. The agency says it will work with Environment Canada to monitor wind patterns that affect the trajectory of any radiation plumes.
"Our assessment ... is that there's no risk to residents in Canada and no foreseeable risks, even with modelling of the worst case scenario," Gully said. "However, we feel it's right in order to be able to continue to reassure Canadians we have the information available on which to base that assessment. It's a precautionary measure."
Meanwhile, B.C.'s provincial health officer says authorities are considering deploying portable nuclear monitoring devices around the province to measure radiation levels coming across the Pacific Ocean from Japan.
Health agencies across B.C. are being flooded with calls following reports that "minuscule" amounts of radiation were detected in southern California Friday.
UN tracking devices say tiny amounts have reached the coast, but air regulators in the state of California say they have not detected increased levels from the damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima power plant.
Dr. Perry Kendall says that B.C. gets updates every day from Health Canada and U.S. and international health authorities about threat levels in the province – and no elevated levels have been reached.
Kendall says that radiation leaving the devastated country is still at a very low level and does not pose a threat to the health of people living on this side of the Pacific Ocean.
"Even the modelling that looks at worst case scenarios of large amounts of radiation being released and some of it getting into the upper atmosphere and hitting the jet stream… would suggest it would take several days to get here and even at that rate the dispersal and the amount would be minimal," he said.
Kendall says the province is mulling setting up portable detectors, perhaps on Vancouver Island and in the province's Interior, to monitor if there is a major release of radiation into the atmosphere.
"We will be able to detect any of the particles that have a major half life and at what concentrations," he said.
The average Canadian is exposed to 2 milliseverts of radiation each year. Kendall says provincial agencies are only expecting a microsevert increase, just one 100th of that amount, because of Japan's deepening nuclear crisis.
Kendall says all British Columbians are exposed to low levels of "background radiation," but it's not harmful.
In Victoria, the yearly average of radiation exposure is less than 2 milliseverts "because the winds blow things away," Kendall said, adding that levels in the Interior are elevated, but still not dangerous.
"If you live near Radium Hot Springs it's probably more radiation than if you lived in the Lower Mainland and in the north," he said.
On Friday, Japan's prime minister said the situation unfolding at Fukushima is "very grave," with several reactors remaining at risk of meltdown at any moment.
Officials have ordered nearly 150,000 people to stay indoors. An additional 70,000 people who live near the facility have been told to leave.
The emergency at Fukushima's Dai-ichi nuclear plant is now classified as a level 4 incident on the International Nuclear Event Scale, meaning it has the same status as the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania.
With files from The Canadian Press
