![]() The particles it emits are less frequent, but they are higher energy, hence the burnout of the phosphorescent material, and the damage to the dial and crystal. Radium goes a little too far beyond what is necessary, its half-life is 1620 years. That might be ok with you, but I consider that a dud. That means that in 12.3 years, the tritium markers on your watch will be glowing at 1/2 of their original brightness. In the course of 12.3 years the tritium decays so that the amount of tritium which remains is 1/2 what it was originally present. It is due to the slow release (decay) of beta particles from the heavy hydrogen that is tritium. so, not being one to place too much personal information on the web, I did the "super" thing, and filled it in.my way.Īs to radium, tritium, and other foibles: The half-life of tritium was set by nature to be 12.3 years. This worked nicely for a year, or more, when I found one day that the permissions on the board were once again changed so that I could not step foot on the BBS without filling in the personal information section of my account. Probably, but I was not involved with any other watch related internet activities, so I'll never know for sure. Within the week, I started getting spam for Rolex, and other "fine" counterfeit watches. So, I begrudgingly, and against my better judgement, registered, but left my personal information section blank. upgraded the BBS, and in so doing, they changed things so that unregistered guests (such as myself) were no longer allowed to post. Nah, someone has to empty the trash, and change the coffee filters at The Daily PlanetĪ long time back, Tom C. In the end, they found absolutely nothing of significance that was radioactive. They went over every inch of his shop, house, yard, and vehicles with radiation detectors. The moon suited guys decended apon him, and took him off to a EPA/DOE medical facility where the medical technicians scrubbed every inch of his body until it was quite raw. I have a friend (whom I have known for 25+ years) who is a surplus dealer who accidentally got a bunch of government surplus neutron detectors, that hadn't been decontaminated prior to sale. I have heard credible stories of watchmakers that have had their shops shut down, and decontaminated by EPA/DOE guys in moon suits. They arrested the driver, and got from him the location where the "radioactive" scrap was picked up.Īnyway, my point is the level of hysteria over radioactive materials has reached a point where radium dials on watches might draw unwanted attention to their wearers/owners. These roadside detectors now litter the interstate highway system, and appear at the gates of most public facilities that take truck traffic. The TSA/homeland security guys were clued into this fact by catching a truck (that was carrying a load of scrap) with one of their road side radiation detectors. It occurs to me that I recently read an artical in my local newspaper about a scrap yard that was shut down by the EPA because it had some old WWII airplane instruments with radium dials. Just some things to think about before you accept radium dials into your collection. Your body expects to have a certain amount of radium in your bones (radium behaves like calcium chemically), so it is hard to say whether this will increase your risk of cancer, or not. Given enough years of this, some damage might occur. If a bit of radium gets inhaled, and lodges in a sinus, or in your lungs, it will spend its time there 24/7, for the next 1600 years, shooting alpha, some beta, and gamma particles, at a slow rate, out through your body. The big risk to a watchmaker is the dust that breaks free of the dial can easily be inhaled.We do spend our time with our noses very close to our work. but given time, it destroys the binders, and becomes somewhat friable. The radium is bound into the paint or wax very well. Radium paint and waxes, when new (and not ingested, or painted on your body!) are essentially harmless. Lead paint, arsenic compounds, mercury compounds, organic solvents, fertilizer, all would cause malaise of some sort if ingested. I cannot imagine the ignorance it would take to intentionally ingest paints and other chemicals used in industry. and, from time to time, they even painted dials. They did amazingly stupid things like: point their brushes with their tongues and lips, paint their teeth, paint their finger nails, paint their lips (and other body parts to surprise their husbands/boyfriends. The important point of the Radium Girls story (that many people miss in their hysteria over radioactive materials) is these girls were simply begging to be damaged by the substance.
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