Unlike most CAMS, the Canberra Alpha Sentry CAM allows immediate responses to acute airborne contamination events.
Most CAMS provide a running average airborne contamination level over the course of the job.
The Canberra Alpha Century keeps a running total, but it also gives indications within 16 seconds of acute airborne events. This allows the workers react immediately to incidents. During work in a highly contaminated area, a worker picked up a bag of contaminated trash to insert more material. Their action of picking up the bag caused a puff of air to emit from the bag that resulted in an acute airborne event. The Canberra Alpha Sentry CAM immediately alerted the personnel and they were able to stop all activity and evaluate what action caused the event.