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. used must be immediately thrown away! Radium can also be absorbed under the nails, so hands must be protected with rubber gloves at all times.The amount of radium in a watch is negligible. A new, safe paint such as the Superluminova type can now be applied, or the dial can be left as it is.Īttention! All rags, sticks, paper, etc. Here we have the clean dial – very, beautiful, and with zero radiation. Then everything is rinsed with running water and washed with liquid soap and a cotton swab. The hands are also cleaned under the water, and then rinsed using gasoline. The radium paint comes off easily in the water. This step should not be rushed – you must always take your time, and the main thing to remember is not to press hard, and instead use light, gentle movements. With a sharpened wooden stick, the radium paint is gently scraped from the dial. While holding the dial down carefully using one finger, it is imperative that rubber gloves are worn. After letting it rest in the water for about 3 – 5 minutes, the paint will start to soften. All operations on the watch are carried out under water in order to avoid any inhalation of radium dust. The dial and hands are carefully removed from the mechanism. Initially, the background radiation from the dial was 908 microrentgen, and 250 microrentgen from the hands. This is a dial from a military watch – the case has been lost and only the mechanism survives, but we will make it into a wristwatch. It is also very important that the dial is kept intact, it is easy to ruin the enamel when scraping the radium paint from it! When removing the radium, movements must be careful, thoughtful, and calm. It is vital that the watch should be housed in an airtight bag. When the watch is without its glass cover, radioactive dust can fall from it, causing the possibility of food contamination or inhalation into the raspatory tract which is very dangerous. A simple demonstration of removing radium from an enamel dialįirst of all, of course, there are precautions that must be taken.
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