In Illinois, a load of steel that had been contaminated by a radioactive cesium source from a cancer therapy machine that was split apart in a mexican junkyard triggered off the detectors in a State Cop's car and started a real kerfluffle as they tracked down what happened.Īnd I have a working Gieger counter in the house. Some folks undergoing Cancer therapy in the New York area either carry letters or are registered, so when they trigger the radiation detectors hidden in the choke point approaches to New York they don't end up in the hoosegow. Mywifespissed, go walk by the Nuclear Medicine Department of a local Hospital and see if you set any alarms off. The danger is when the stuff (both) becomes airborn, thus being introduced in the body. Generally tritium will be found in sealed glass capsules. Although tritium's beta radiation is potentially dangerous if ingested, it has replaced radium in these applications. Radium was still used in dials as late as the 1950s. Then, it can bombard cells with radiation at close range, which may cause bone tumors or bone-marrow damage that can give rise to anemia or leukemia. Radium bonds in the body like calcium, concentrating and becoming chemically bonded in the bones.
When marie curie was presented with an ounce of radium in 1921, it was enclosed in 110 pounds of lead. In a mix that loses about 1% of its activity in 25 years, being transformed into elements of lower atomic weight with lead being the final product of disintegration. Radium has 4 predominately natural isotopes, with the half lives being:ġ602 years (Radium 226 is a product of Uranium 238 decay), alpha emitterĦ.7 years (Radium 228 is a product of Thorium 232 breakdown), beta emitter Tritium is radioactive with a half-life of 12.32 years. Let us know!Īre you sure they weren't tritium ? That seems to be the requisite time span: You can have it Geiger counter checked to be sure. But your Big Ben (1960's) is not old enough to have the radium painted dial.
My "SPUR" alarm clock circa 1949, glows only after being exposed to strong visible light or black light, so my clock probably has a phosphorous mixture of some kind. which made luminous dials of different formulas (not radium), until the late 1970's. She informs me that Westclox stopped using radium paint in the 1930's and the old Radium Dial Company (The "Radium Girls") had been bought out by the Luminous Processes Co. I wrote to the curator of the Westclox Museum in Illinois asking about this. If THIS clock face had radium paint, it would be a hundred times the amount used on a wristwatch dial. It had a faceplate nearly five inches square, with large luminous hands, and large number markers. Thyratron, I may be able to shed some light on this, as I had asked the exact same question about my Westclox alarm clock, the "SPUR" model, made from 1938-1958.
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