Vaseline/uranium glass is cool looking. I have a few display pieces.
Another source of radioactive antiques are things made of jadeite.
safe bet that anything older then 40 years old, glass or glass-like, and florescent is probably doped with something unsafe -- but they still make wonderful trophies.
Sadly my military USSR watch with radium painted arms has faded away and no longer glows. The machined trefoil on the back lid of it is still pretty cool, though.
Also, the article mentions it briefly, but radiation is one of the things to worry about least when using vintage ceramic goods. Those glazes are jam-packed with metals that are well known to be carcinogenic now-a-days.
There's a classic science fiction story called "The Potters of Firsk" that I think involves uranium glass or glaze although I can't remember the details.
Even more widespread and arguably of greater risk is the widespread use of lead. I'd assumed that anything produced in the last twenty years or so would be lead-free and it turns out I'd assumed wrong. Garden hose fixtures often contain lead [1], and there are recalls of popular toys with red or yellow paint [2]. And this is just going through what's still in my browser history.
I'm not completely paranoid about lead exposure. I used to hand-set lead type and donated my last case of type to the program where I learned letterpress about ten years ago. But it seems ridiculous that things like toys, artificial Christmas trees and conveyances for food and drink would still have lead in the twenty-first century.
Lead that is alloyed to other metals for ease of machining isn't going to get into anyone in meaningful quantity since it's alloyed into something strong and wear resistant. Even lead in potable water plumbing is a non-issue so long as you don't pull a Flint and let it dissolve. Paint is a far bigger issue since it wears much faster releasing much more lead. But as long as you weren't raised in house full of it you're probably fine.
Modern plastics of various varieties contain far more suspicious molecules IMO.
The standard for lead in drinking water is set where it is so a kid can drink the tap water from day 1 and not suffer any ill effects. There are municipalities all over the country delivering water that meets these standards through some amount of lead or leaded fittings.
In light of that it seems disingenuous to complain that a hose (as opposed to the water coming out of the hose) has 18x that much lead. If the lead has no reasonably means by which it will get into someone then what's the big deal?
I'm not saying I want more lead but you gotta pick your battles when it comes to chemically. Anything is bad if you have enough exposure. If the amount of lead people are exposed to is not gonna have any effect in their lifetime then lets check that box and move on to the next chemical.
How is something harmful if the effects are below a measurable threshold?
And before you say "well if you construct a study and have a control group, etc, etc", yes, ok, fine, you can measure really small changes that way. What happens when the harm is below the noise threshold of that too?
There's a million things in our world that are gonna give us cancer or whatever in 50yr. Having some lead painted antique trinket that sits on a shelf or leaded brass in your hose nozzle isn't going to harmfully affect anyone if it's practically your only voluntary exposure. It's like smoking one cigarette once. Sure it's not good for you but it's also not going to be what kills you.
> How is something harmful if the effects are below a measurable threshold?
Your parent didn't say below a measurable threshold, they used a much weaker "you don't notice." Lead has been shown in countless studies to be harmful, and a lot of its effects are subtle like behavior and learning problems, hyperactivity, lower intelligence, men's fertility, fetal health, cardiovascular problems, kidney function... so you might not notice low grade lead poisoning but it can still be slowly wrecking your body.
> How is something harmful if the effects are below a measurable threshold?
AFAIU, the claim in the literature is that nobody has found a dosage without a measurable effect, at least at population scale. Now, that may simply be because nobody has setup a study to test a dosage at the limits of what can be measured. But in any event the claim is based on numerous studies that postdate most quantitative lead level thresholds. Those regulatory thresholds haven't been updated because the consensus opinion now, in light of the believed mechanism of action in neurological tissue and epidemiological data, is that any ingestion can potentially have a lasting, detrimental impact, however slight; and the consensus goal, however aspirational, is to eliminate all lead exposure during developmentally critical years.
Punching somebody in the head might not cause any meaningful, discernible damage, but nobody is suggesting it's benign, and nobody is going to invest any effort to determine the minimum impact force or number of impacts below which damage is indiscernible or nonexistent. You just aim to avoid all punches to the head, period. Any quantitative thresholds, such as number of known concussions, are simply designed to help allocate limited resources for aggressive interventions. The same is true for lead--preexisting federal and state blood lead levels are designed (or rather reconstrued, ex post) to be a trigger for intervention, not a threshold below which we presume the absence of damage. It's an important distinction.
Of course, it's understood that lead is not only pervasive in the natural environment, but in our industrial processes and especially in our built environment. That's why Federal law deliberately declassified lead as hazardous waste--to make it cheaper and easier to remove and dispose of post haste. Contrast that with asbestos or other hazardous, sometimes more benign, substances.
I remember when everybody on HN complained about the EU banning leaded solder. I think most of the complaints missed the point--there is no safe level for lead in the environment considering its effect on neurological development. We can't objectively set a specific level that we can honestly, knowingly live with as a society, so the policy is simply to slowly, methodically remove it as best we can.
The ability to measure things like intelligence accurately doesn't determine the threshold at which there is an effect. This isn't about whether or not you die - there are other risks worth considering.
> And before you say ... What happens when the harm is below the noise threshold of that too?
Since you are at HN, you should know the answer to that. If the scientist doing the study is any good, the study will find very weak correlation and the conclusion will be something along the lines of "we have found no statistically significant evidence that lead released by faucets result in adverse health condition over a period of X months/years. More research is needed to measure long term exposure".
On the other hand, what I read was "I promise you, you will find no scientific evidence that lead is bad. Do not look at the man behind... sorry, do not waste your time looking for peer reviewed articles that disprove my point".
> There's a million things in our world that are gonna give us cancer or whatever in 50yr
Perhaps a million is an exaggeration, but precisely because there are thousands of molecules that cause barely measurable damage is because you have to take them all seriously. 100 years ago there were order of magnitude less variety of molecules, so even if people then had greater exposure, it was a reasonable expectation that they may only develop symptoms on their old age, or never at all. But now, since there are lots of them, each chipping away at your body, you may be seriously ill in a time frame that matters.
>in 50 yr
So, you are saying that it is Ok that old people just roll and die? Even if we accept the implicit claim that only old people is affected (I am assuming 50 + 20-ish here), the problem is that they don't just die. They spend their last years pointlessly suffering chronic diseases. They are forced into early retirement (loss of human capital, from a macro point of view) and they either deplete their savings or end up spending a part of their children's income on their care. They find themselves unable to lead an independent life (again, placing a burden on both family and the state). They crowd medical services that were designed with and overall healthy population in mind, and then somebody else dies because they did not receive the care they needed in time.
> if it's practically your only voluntary exposure
> It's like smoking one cigarette once
You are assuming that you can control how much of a exposure you have. If you allow hazardous materials into the INFRASTRUCTURE around you, you are committing your future self to the task of avoiding the hazard over and over again. Given that humans have limited attention span and will force, it is much better to make the decision once and not allow the hazardous material in the first place.
So, you are saying you never drank from a hose as a kid, or ever saw any other kids drinking from hoses? The fact that the phrase "drink from the hose" is used as a metaphor on top of the literal meaning should suggest this is a common human experience, at least in the US.
Of course, it is already known that tap water is no safe for human consumption, everybody will buy bottled water (or brave the ill effects, if they are poor enough) and be done with it. The problem is when you advertise tap water as drinking safe, spend tax money on delivering safe water to every home in the municipality, and then fail to control the quality/safety of plumbing inside said houses.
Older Crockpots usually have lead in the interior coating as well. Found that out on Reddit when someone was told they should test their new Goodwill purchase.
I don't know exactly what time period it applies to, but I think the bearings in an auto engine sometimes contain lead, which is a (maybe not the only) reason that used engine oil may be considered hazardous. I am aware of an example from the late 80s that seems to have lead and one from the early 2010s that doesn't.
> Eben Byers, a wealthy American socialite, athlete, industrialist and Yale College graduate, died from Radithor radium poisoning in 1932. Byers was buried in a lead-lined coffin; when exhumed in 1965 for study, his remains were still highly radioactive.
Apparently the bottles are still collectors' items.
My parents were antique collectors. They were very proud of a glow-in-the-dark fireman's helmet circa 1940's that my dad bought. They told me it was radium paint and to keep away from it.
I will say it does it's job. That helmet was still glowing in the dark just fine
I once had my home swept for radioactive materials (long story). After the inspectors finished a few hours of trying to distinguish a few Geiger counter clicks from the natural background, the lead tech pulled a small orange Fiestaware bowl out of his bag. "Did you know these are hot?" he asked, and put it up next to the wand. The Geiger counter just screamed, which was both alarming and reassuring given the context.
Older Fiesta dinnerware (especially in red) is quite famous for having Uranium in the glaze prior to World War 2, which was then confiscated for the war effort. I believe they then returned to using Uranium in the glaze after the war for a few years.
Some acquaintances emptied the pepper from a Fiestaware shaker and took it to a radioactivity testing event at the local firehouse. As I recall, the pepper itself was not at all radioactive.
Those are common and still sold everywhere (I have 6 of them around my house). As long as you don't chop up your smoke detector or try eating it, it's not a big risk.
Here is an interesting article I found a while ago on this subject by a vintage watch collector who took some measurements of his radium dial watches using a Geiger counter:
The dose rates that he measured varied considerably depending on the watch. One very radioactive one was about ~30 times the background dose rate with the glass off and in very close proximity. Probably not something you'd want to wear on your wrist every day...
Apparently David Hahn used the radium paint from old clocks to make a neutron gun for irradiating his DIY nuclear reactor.
If you haven't heard about that, it's a remarkable story about a precocious kid who could put Ferris Bueller to shame. He cons material supply companies, gets arrested for stealing smoke detectors, and single-handedly creates a superfund site. And in the end, he gets to fulfill his dream of working with nuclear energy by serving on a nuclear aircraft carrier.
Honestly, it reads like a movie script and makes me ashamed of how I squandered my youth:
Also, if you can find a PDF of "The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments" which that article occasionally quotes...wow. How did kids survive the '70s? Page 35, "making chlorine gas in the home lab"...
Missing from both is radioactive electronics. In lamps, electron sources, spark gaps, it's common to use radioactive materials to make ionization easier. In a lamp for example this would make it start at lower voltage
42 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 88.2 ms ] threadhttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls
They were told it was safe, so some even intentionally painted their teeth.
Another source of radioactive antiques are things made of jadeite.
safe bet that anything older then 40 years old, glass or glass-like, and florescent is probably doped with something unsafe -- but they still make wonderful trophies.
Sadly my military USSR watch with radium painted arms has faded away and no longer glows. The machined trefoil on the back lid of it is still pretty cool, though.
Also, the article mentions it briefly, but radiation is one of the things to worry about least when using vintage ceramic goods. Those glazes are jam-packed with metals that are well known to be carcinogenic now-a-days.
[1] https://ideas.time.com/2012/08/02/is-your-garden-hose-toxic/ [2] https://tamararubin.com/2018/09/reminder-june-2007-thomas-th...
Lead is still used in huge quantities to make domestic roofs. You may have many kg of lead over your head right now!
Modern plastics of various varieties contain far more suspicious molecules IMO.
In light of that it seems disingenuous to complain that a hose (as opposed to the water coming out of the hose) has 18x that much lead. If the lead has no reasonably means by which it will get into someone then what's the big deal?
I'm not saying I want more lead but you gotta pick your battles when it comes to chemically. Anything is bad if you have enough exposure. If the amount of lead people are exposed to is not gonna have any effect in their lifetime then lets check that box and move on to the next chemical.
And before you say "well if you construct a study and have a control group, etc, etc", yes, ok, fine, you can measure really small changes that way. What happens when the harm is below the noise threshold of that too?
There's a million things in our world that are gonna give us cancer or whatever in 50yr. Having some lead painted antique trinket that sits on a shelf or leaded brass in your hose nozzle isn't going to harmfully affect anyone if it's practically your only voluntary exposure. It's like smoking one cigarette once. Sure it's not good for you but it's also not going to be what kills you.
Your parent didn't say below a measurable threshold, they used a much weaker "you don't notice." Lead has been shown in countless studies to be harmful, and a lot of its effects are subtle like behavior and learning problems, hyperactivity, lower intelligence, men's fertility, fetal health, cardiovascular problems, kidney function... so you might not notice low grade lead poisoning but it can still be slowly wrecking your body.
AFAIU, the claim in the literature is that nobody has found a dosage without a measurable effect, at least at population scale. Now, that may simply be because nobody has setup a study to test a dosage at the limits of what can be measured. But in any event the claim is based on numerous studies that postdate most quantitative lead level thresholds. Those regulatory thresholds haven't been updated because the consensus opinion now, in light of the believed mechanism of action in neurological tissue and epidemiological data, is that any ingestion can potentially have a lasting, detrimental impact, however slight; and the consensus goal, however aspirational, is to eliminate all lead exposure during developmentally critical years.
Punching somebody in the head might not cause any meaningful, discernible damage, but nobody is suggesting it's benign, and nobody is going to invest any effort to determine the minimum impact force or number of impacts below which damage is indiscernible or nonexistent. You just aim to avoid all punches to the head, period. Any quantitative thresholds, such as number of known concussions, are simply designed to help allocate limited resources for aggressive interventions. The same is true for lead--preexisting federal and state blood lead levels are designed (or rather reconstrued, ex post) to be a trigger for intervention, not a threshold below which we presume the absence of damage. It's an important distinction.
Of course, it's understood that lead is not only pervasive in the natural environment, but in our industrial processes and especially in our built environment. That's why Federal law deliberately declassified lead as hazardous waste--to make it cheaper and easier to remove and dispose of post haste. Contrast that with asbestos or other hazardous, sometimes more benign, substances.
I remember when everybody on HN complained about the EU banning leaded solder. I think most of the complaints missed the point--there is no safe level for lead in the environment considering its effect on neurological development. We can't objectively set a specific level that we can honestly, knowingly live with as a society, so the policy is simply to slowly, methodically remove it as best we can.
> And before you say ... What happens when the harm is below the noise threshold of that too?
Since you are at HN, you should know the answer to that. If the scientist doing the study is any good, the study will find very weak correlation and the conclusion will be something along the lines of "we have found no statistically significant evidence that lead released by faucets result in adverse health condition over a period of X months/years. More research is needed to measure long term exposure".
On the other hand, what I read was "I promise you, you will find no scientific evidence that lead is bad. Do not look at the man behind... sorry, do not waste your time looking for peer reviewed articles that disprove my point".
> There's a million things in our world that are gonna give us cancer or whatever in 50yr
Perhaps a million is an exaggeration, but precisely because there are thousands of molecules that cause barely measurable damage is because you have to take them all seriously. 100 years ago there were order of magnitude less variety of molecules, so even if people then had greater exposure, it was a reasonable expectation that they may only develop symptoms on their old age, or never at all. But now, since there are lots of them, each chipping away at your body, you may be seriously ill in a time frame that matters.
>in 50 yr
So, you are saying that it is Ok that old people just roll and die? Even if we accept the implicit claim that only old people is affected (I am assuming 50 + 20-ish here), the problem is that they don't just die. They spend their last years pointlessly suffering chronic diseases. They are forced into early retirement (loss of human capital, from a macro point of view) and they either deplete their savings or end up spending a part of their children's income on their care. They find themselves unable to lead an independent life (again, placing a burden on both family and the state). They crowd medical services that were designed with and overall healthy population in mind, and then somebody else dies because they did not receive the care they needed in time.
> if it's practically your only voluntary exposure > It's like smoking one cigarette once
You are assuming that you can control how much of a exposure you have. If you allow hazardous materials into the INFRASTRUCTURE around you, you are committing your future self to the task of avoiding the hazard over and over again. Given that humans have limited attention span and will force, it is much better to make the decision once and not allow the hazardous material in the first place.
Of course, it is already known that tap water is no safe for human consumption, everybody will buy bottled water (or brave the ill effects, if they are poor enough) and be done with it. The problem is when you advertise tap water as drinking safe, spend tax money on delivering safe water to every home in the municipality, and then fail to control the quality/safety of plumbing inside said houses.
Paint is also more likely to be eaten by children. That's the bigger issue, IIRC.
It's been found in children's toys from China. For adults it's not as big a deal, you pretty much have to eat it to be harmed
> Eben Byers, a wealthy American socialite, athlete, industrialist and Yale College graduate, died from Radithor radium poisoning in 1932. Byers was buried in a lead-lined coffin; when exhumed in 1965 for study, his remains were still highly radioactive.
Apparently the bottles are still collectors' items.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoriated_glass
Lenses, as you pointed, are safe: http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:652338/FULLTEXT01... I'd avoid dropping/breaking one indoor though.
I will say it does it's job. That helmet was still glowing in the dark just fine
You can see one being checked with a geiger counter here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmDKbVUbsnk&t=394s
[EDIT] This is covered in some detail on the wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiesta_(dinnerware)#Radioactiv...
https://www.epa.gov/radtown/americium-ionization-smoke-detec...
https://www.vintagewatchstraps.com/luminous.php
The dose rates that he measured varied considerably depending on the watch. One very radioactive one was about ~30 times the background dose rate with the glass off and in very close proximity. Probably not something you'd want to wear on your wrist every day...
Whole body Ambient radiation dose is about 0.3 rem/year. You could assume your wrist is about 1% of this or 0.003 rem. 30x would be 0.09 rem.
The OSHA safety limit is 75 rem per year to the hands of workers, which is about 800x higher than the watch.
If you haven't heard about that, it's a remarkable story about a precocious kid who could put Ferris Bueller to shame. He cons material supply companies, gets arrested for stealing smoke detectors, and single-handedly creates a superfund site. And in the end, he gets to fulfill his dream of working with nuclear energy by serving on a nuclear aircraft carrier.
Honestly, it reads like a movie script and makes me ashamed of how I squandered my youth:
https://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-scou...
Also, if you can find a PDF of "The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments" which that article occasionally quotes...wow. How did kids survive the '70s? Page 35, "making chlorine gas in the home lab"...
This EPA page has a better list https://www.epa.gov/radiation/what-kinds-consumer-products-c...
Missing from both is radioactive electronics. In lamps, electron sources, spark gaps, it's common to use radioactive materials to make ionization easier. In a lamp for example this would make it start at lower voltage
https://instructional-resources.physics.uiowa.edu/demos/7d30...
https://www.orau.org/ptp/collection/consumer%20products/elec...