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Could someone clarify how radiation dosing and dose rates are measured?

The article says background radiation levels peaked at .15 mSv in 1963. Looking at the wikipedia page on Seiverts, I am trying to compare this to other radiation examples, but not sure how to draw a comparison.

Would a human standing outside be receiving .15 mSv per hour? year? total?

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Radiation units are a bit weird. Sieverts are normalized to biological damage, because units of energy are insufficient to differentiate between 1 J of sunlight and 1 J of x-rays.

I think the 0.15 mSv the article mentions is per year. The next sentence says per year explicitly.

It's an odd reference in the context of reduced need for special pre-war II non-irradiated steel.

From the article if looks like the most important factor for that would be atmospheric concentration of Cobalt-60 (in ppm or ppb).

relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/radiation/

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