RADIUM DIALS SKIN

Gamma radiation is a form of nuclear radiation produced by certain radioactive elements as they decay. I move them around in leads pots in wooden boxes inside a metal carrying case (actually a small tool box) the gamma gets through all of that. I'm always more wary of the beta sources, I wash my hands every time I handle any of them, even just the boxes, because of the alpha, and I make sure I keep the beta 20-30 centimetres away. However if you swallow a source or breathe it in then you expose tissue that has not even got that level of protection.īeta can have different energy levels but we use a 1.5 cm block of acrylic to stop it at shool.

RADIUM DIALS SKIN

The individual beams are a minimal risk, they become effective when the beams converge on a single point.Īlpha is stopped by the dead skin on your fingers, by a piece of tissue paper, even by the oil from your fingers left when you touch something. They use it for surgery by aiming more than one collimated beam from different angles to converge on a point. Like all ionising radiation it can do harm, like the tens of thousands of cosmic rays that go through your body every hour of every day, but because it is the least ionising of the three it does the least. It goes through things because it doesn't interact with things, when it does it doesn't go through them. Gamma bears absolutely no relationship to a bullet at all. I use ionising sources at work and have to check them for leaks and manage the records. I have to say I didn't bother watching the video because you can't believe everything you read on the internet. (Ermahgerd - did he say asbestos?!? Call in the hazmat team!) I just have more important (and more real) things to worry about.Īsbestos undies in place - bring on the flaming. Another old saw says there's nothing wrong with being overly cautious. If you choose to be terrified of radium, it's your choice. The main reason removing the radium is not a job for a novice is because you're likely to tear up the dial. My wife and I used a whisk broom and dust pan when I dropped one two weeks ago, and neither of us has gone mad from mercury poisoning. Heaven help you if you drop a compact fluorescent bulb - according to the rules, you're supposed to evacuate the house and call in the hazmat clean-up team. The freak out about radium is along the lines of calling in the hazmat team if you break a mercury thermometer - today's nanny society calls for a hyper reaction to anything. If I come across a dial with flaking radium, I just use Rodico to mop up the loose pieces and toss the Rodico in the waste basket. Wipe up the dust with the paper towel, remove the dial, and wrap the plastic bag in aluminum foil when you're through. Try not to cry when you destroy the dial. Grasp the scraper from outside the bag, and go to town. If you want to remove the radium paint and shield yourself from it completely, put the dial and a scraper of some sort in a plastic bag, along with a damp paper towel. You're in more real radiation danger from an old microwave oven. It's only a danger if there's long-term exposure to significant quantities. Yes, a dial with radium markers will make a Geiger counter go bonkers - at close range - but it's alpha particles, which are stopped nicely by a sheet of notebook paper. The women who were killed by radium poisoning had been licking their radium-laden paintbrushes for an extended period of time. As Kevin said, don't eat the radium.Īs the old saw says, the poison is in the dose. But more and more were getting sick.'įinally, he said, a labor union in Marseilles raised $7,000 to pay for legal expenses, enough for the women to hire a Chicago lawyer.The amount of radium in a watch is negligible. 'In a town the size of Ottawa that would have been very embarrassing for the girls and their families,' he said. 'When they started dying, it was initially attributed to diphtheria, then typhus.'Ĭompany officials warned that if the women pursued legal action, they would attribute the deaths to syphilis, he said. 'Company doctors would test them but wouldn't give them the results,' Suppan said. Officials later learned that when a person ingests radium, it goes right to the bones and destroys the marrow, he said.Īs the illnesses became more common, he said, women in Ottawa, as well as other cities, asked to be tested. The progression was slow, with death coming in two to three years, he said. Symptoms began in New Jersey, he said, with complaints of anemia, teeth falling out, bone fractures and tumors developing on jaws, hips and joints.

Radium dials