Radioactive buyer Products

I am sure that most population are not aware that some of the consumer products that are present colse to us contain Radioactive Material/s (Ram) (i.e. Uranium).

I am posting this, not to scare the social but to raise their awareness on what base consumer products contain this Ram. Furthermore, this is to forewarn them that radiation has many uses in our daily lives.

Nuclear Reactor

Take a look at the following images and see if you identify them are if they are present in your homes.

Check - Up Gum

Check- Up Gum helped fight plaque. As the gum was chewed, tiny granules of zirconium silicate (the third listed ingredient) scraped the teeth clean.

The hypothesize that Check·Up Gum is featured here is that the zirconium silicate contained elevated levels of uranium and thorium (e.g., 100 pCi/g). The amount of zirconium silicate in the gum was such that the uranium attention is almost 7 pCi per gram of gum. Since the uranium series is in secular equilibrium, the gum also contains 7 pCi of Ra-226 per gram. As a matter of interest, there have been many situations where this level of radium in soil has required healthful action.

Although Check·Up Gum is no longer produced, zirconium silicate continues to be used in dental pastes and some toothpastes. Nevertheless, consumers can rest assured that the radiation dose is negligible - the radioactive material is bound up in the zirconium silicate and would not be assimilated even if swallowed.

Tape Dispenser

This is a 3M Model C-15 Decor Scotch tape dispenser. It is slightly radioactive due to the thorium-containing monazite sand that was used as ballast. This singular example came from a 55 gallon drum of tape dispensers that the U.S. Army was about to dispose of as radioactive waste.

Jewelries

As a consequent of an investigation in early 1988 by the Los Angeles County health Department, discrete state radiation control programs in the U.S. Issued warnings regarding the fabricate and use of jewelry made from old watch parts. These parts often included radioluminescent watch faces and hands. The jewelry, which included, broaches, bracelets, earrings, etc. Had become quite favorite and because it was easy to produce, the typical maker was a small business operating out of someone's home or apartment. Production is known to have occurred in California, Oregon, Texas and Pennsylvania. The radiation control programs in Tennessee, Texas and possibly some other states invited the social to bring hypothesize jewelry to their offices to be monitored for radioactivity.

The usual mode of fabricate was to dismantle old watches, clean the parts with some sort of abrasive, polish the pieces, assemble the jewelry, and possibly coat it with an acrylic spray. It seems that there was no awareness on the part of the manufacturers of the possible hazards.

Even though some of the jewelry was worn in direct experience with the skin, and a amount of premises were found to be contaminated (e.g., up to 50,000 cpm), there were no reports of injuries to individuals who wore or man-made the jewelry. Nevertheless, one individual, who had been manufacture such jewelry for six years, was found to have "1/30 of a body burden of radium-226."

Potassium Chloride Water Softener Salt

Hard water contains more minerals, especially calcium and magnesium, that lowly water. This can lead to the build up of scale in pipes and appliances. A water softener is used to cut the attention of these minerals.

In essence, a water softener consists of an ion change resin that removes the minerals as the water flows through it. After a while, the resin becomes saturated with these minerals and it no longer functions. At this point, a salt clarification is added to the resin. The salt exchanges with the accumulated minerals, and allows them to be washed out of the softener into a drain. This rejuvenates the softener.

A variety of materials can be used as the water softener salt, e.g., sodium chloride (NaCl) or potassium chloride (Kcl). In the example shown here, the water softener salt is over 99% potassium chloride.

All potassium contains potassium-40, a plainly occurring beta gamma emitter, and in large sufficient quantities it is actually detected with a easy seek meter. This bag, for example, could not get through a monitor at a nuclear power plant without setting off an alarm.

Smoke Detectors

The ionization accommodation smoke detector was invented in the early 1940s in Switzerland , and introduced into the U.S. In 1951.

The sensitive component of the Icsd is an ionization accommodation that is open to the atmosphere (photo below left). A radioactive source inside the accommodation emits radiation that ionizes the air in the accommodation and makes it conductive.

Ionization accommodation smoke detectors almost all the time use alpha emitters as the source because of the high density of the ionization that they produce.

Most Icsds sold today use an oxide of americium-241 (Am-241) as the radioactive source. The typical action for a modern residential Icsd is almost 1 uCi, while the action in one used in social and commercial structure might be as high as 50 uCi. In 1980, the mean action employed in a residential smoke detector was almost 3 uCi, three time higher than it is today.

Am-241 is an alpha emitter, but it also emits a low power (59.5 keV) gamma ray. The Am-241 is mixed with gold and incorporated into a composite gold and silver foil sandwich. The source is 3 to 5 mm in diameter, and whether crimped or welded into place inside the chamber.

Other nuclides have also been used. Nrc records indicate that almost 124,000 Icsds were sold in the middle of 1971 and 1986 that employed nickel-63 (Ni-63). These units averaged almost 10 microcuries of Ni-63 each.

Radium-226 (radium sulfate) was the first radioactive source used in smoke detectors. Agreeing to Nureg/Cp-0001, U.S. Producers stopped manufacture Ra-226 containing smoke detectors in 1963 when they switched to Am-241. Nevertheless, Agreeing to Ncrp 95, it would seem that radium-containing Icsds continued to be sold in the U.S. At least until 1978. A typical residential smoke detector contained 0.05 uCi of Ra-226, but some contained up to 0.1 uCi. commercial smoke detectors employed considerably higher activities.

Radioactive buyer Products