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Parkhomov published decay rate measurements of 90Sr/90Y and 60Co beta decay sources with Geiger–Müller counters which showed annual cyclic deviations with less than 0.2% amplitude from a purely exponential slope. He investigated instrument instability induced by environmental parameters, yet did not find a clear coincidence with local temperature, atmospheric pressure, and relative humidity. Parkhomov hypothesised that gravitationally-focussed 'slow' cosmic neutrinos influenced beta decay. In the current work, environmental conditions in the Moscow area at the time of the experiment are presented. There appears to be a resemblance of the shape of the annual 90Sr/90Y decay rate anomalies with the inverse of the absolute air humidity, albeit with an apparent time shift of 0.05–0.15 year. Humidity may have influenced the range of beta particles in air, as well as geometric and electronic properties of the detection set-up, however causality could not be unambiguously demonstrated. The instabilities in the 60Co data were more difficult to correlate with environmental data, except for some similarities with temperature and external dew point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 32Si decay rate measurement data of Alburger et al. obtained in 1982–1986 at Brookhaven National Laboratory have been presented repeatedly as evidence for solar neutrino-induced beta decay. The count rates show an annual sinusoidal oscillation of about 0.1% amplitude and maximum at February–March. Several authors have claimed that the annual oscillations could not be explained by environmental influences on the set-up, and they questioned the invariability of the decay constant. They hypothesised a correlation with changes in the solar neutrino flux due to annual variations in the Earth-Sun distance, in spite of an obvious mismatch in amplitude and phase. In this work, environmental conditions at the time of the experiment are presented. The 32Si decay rate measurements appear to be inversely correlated with the dew point in a nearby weather station. Susceptibility of the detection set-up to local temperature and humidity conditions is a likely cause of the observed instabilities in the measured decay rates. Similar conclusions apply to 36Cl decay rates measured at Ohio State University in 2005–2012. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]