The article on radioactive mantles is quite informative. It mentions that ‘some
streets in London are lit with gas even now’ This isn’t really true, although
there are some gas lights to be seen in the royal parks- see http://www.citiesofscience.co.uk/go/London/ContentPlace_1884.html
Berlin, on the other hand, has over 40000 gas lights on regular streets.
The local government has decided they have to go in order to save energy,
so if you’re interested, plan your visit soon! There’s also an open air museum:
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board, LeoS, we’re glad to have you with us.
When you start a thread, it’s helpful to other readers if you provide a link to the column. In this case, Are camp lanterns radioactive? The link saves search time, and keeps us all on the same page.
It’s not a problem, you’ll know for next time, and, as I say, welcome!
I can affirm that lantern mantles are indeed “radioactive”, though not at all harmful to handle. They definitely set off the radiation detectors at the gates at nuclear power plants. Back in the old days, as a prank, someone would put one inside somebody’s hardhat in order to set off the monitors and give them a ration. (I’m sure that this is now heavily frowned upon.) Once when I was taking some training, the instructor put a geiger counter next to one and it went crazy.
So yes, it’s a source, but no, it’s really not a big deal.
This article of Cecil’s set off my tabloid ignorance detector :). Since it’s possible some current and future reporters look to straightdope.com for examples of how its’ done, I hope you don’t mind some preventive pedantry.
It’s in the second to last paragraph - “… would expose you to 0.3 to 0.6 millirems of radioactivity, …”. :smack: This mistake makes me, and other educated nukes, conclude the author probably can’t teach us anything, and stop reading right there. Radioactivity is not measured in millirems, or any other multiple of rems. It’s a measure of the amount of radioactive material present expressed as rate of that material’s decay (e.g. the Becquerel, or decay per second.)
The rem, on the other hand, is a unit of effective radiation dose that a person, or some of a person’s tissue and/or organs, is subject to. More technicalities here; but what I want you to take away is that radiation dose and radioactivity are not interchangeable concepts.
Treating them as interchangeable is like treating gallons of gas and highway miles traveled as interchangeable. We know there is some potential relation between the two, but that relation can vary widely depending on what vehicle is used, how fast it’s driven, how well it’s maintained, and of course whether the gas is used in a vehicle at all. A tank of hundreds of gallons of gas could (and sometimes is) ultimately be responsible for a total of zero miles. And your Amish neighbor’s horse-drawn surrey could (and does) quite a way burning no gas at all!
What would you think of the writer if you read about how many “highway miles of gas” someone used to power their emergency generator? Well, this kind of conceptual conflation always strikes me the same way :dubious: when I read it.
Look up the story of David Hahn. He used lantern mantles in his home-brew reactor (not sure if it helped). Just saw the update from 2007, seems he’s still at it.
Oh, please. Cecil was writing for the popular audience, which has no idea what a millirem is (much less a sievert), and was waving the radioactivity flag to give them the general idea. Nonetheless, he’d probably have kept everyone happy, or happier, if he’d said something like, “expose you to a radiation dose of X millirems.”
David Hand was a boy scout working on his Nuclear Energy badge. He got a little over ambitious. I’m not sure how this accurate this article is (The Radioactive Boy Scout). My son who’s a physical chemist claims that many of the articles on this subject exaggerated the dangers to others. However, he does agree that it would create a huge expensive mess to clean up.
About the article – The Radioactive Boy Scout: Just wanted to add that the amount of americium in a smoke detector is minuscule – smaller than a pinhead and weighs less than a third of a microgram. This is one of the strange things about the story. Even with hundreds of smoke detectors, you still wouldn’t have more than a speck of the stuff.
The americium in smoke detectors is relatively safe. It is mainly an alpha particle source, and the shielding around the americium stops almost all of the alpha particles.
Speaking of “Radioactive Boy Scout” David Hahn, there was some speculation when he was arrested that he was actually a meth addict – that the facial sores and tooth decay evident in his mug shot were there because of methamphetamine use rather than because of radiation exposure. I did find a couple news articles about a David Hahn being arrested for having a meth lab in his house, but that was in Florida, while the “Radioactive Boy Scout” David Hahn was in Michigan.
However, the last news articles I can find about his arrest in 2007 said he’d been sentenced to 90 days, suspended for six months while he received treatment for radiation exposure. Does anybody know what happened to him?
… okay, never mind, it appears he has been arrested numerous times for drug possession, carrying a concealed weapon, probation violation (failing a drug test), and “maintaining a drug house” since then. Guess the speculations were probably correct. Wow.
[Yes, I used to work with radioactive substances.]