My mother-in-law lives in a rural area where it is dark at night. She has a religious statue in her room, which looks as if it is several decades old. When I sleep in her bed *, in the darkness I can see that the statue glows faintly. It seems that it has a coating of luminous paint.
In the 1960’s I had a watch with luminous hands and numbers. I was warned later that it was probably slightly radioactive. In the past luminous paints were often based on a radioactive component.
If it is as old as I think, is it likely that this statue is slightly radioactive?
And if so, does it matter? I assume that any radioactivity level must be minimal.
*That was not well expressed. :eek: I lead an interesting life but not in that way. The lady is not present when I sleep in her bed.
Almost certainly phosphorescent. You could test it by keeping it away from daylight for several days, and see if it loses its ability to glow in the dark, regaining it when it sits out in the light for a while again. Google “luminous religious statues”, and you will note that there are a lot of places selling such items.
You say the statue is several decades old. If it was made in the 1930s or earlier, it could very well have radioluminescent pain. For a while there, especially in the 1920s, radioactivity was the latest and greatest miracle cure. People had large water jars lined with uranium to give their water special healing powers. :eek:
Cecil did a column (a LONG time back) that talked about radioactive watch faces—it was one of the first Straight Dope columns I ever read, back in the early 1980’s…
Can’t anyone else hear this thread begging for a lyrics post?
o/ I don't care if it rains or freezes As long as I've got my plastic Jesus Glued to the dashboard of my car You can buy Him phosphorescent Glows in the dark, He's pink and pleasant Take Him with you when you're travelling far. o/
As its luminescence is faint, a reduction in intensity may not be obvious. It may be better to try Yabob’s second suggestion and expose it to bright light. It will be eerie if it works. A glowing figure in the dark will not help me sleep.
However, my second question may be more important. If it is radioactive paint, does it matter? Over many decades, I wonder if the radioactivity would have dropped substantially. Is that a question about the half life of the likely radio-active components?
Search the web for safety info on Undark, which was a radioluminous paint used in watch dials. It caused the death of many factory workers who were encouraged to lick their paint brushes to produce a fine point and thereby ingested toxic amounts of the paint internally. Not clear whether it’s also hazardous just to be in the same room with the stuff.
If it’s luminescent paint (very unlikely), it’s probably Radium paint. Radium has a half-life of 1600 years, so it would be just about as radioactive as it was when it was made. If it is radioactive, it’s probably quite valuable, but I think the likelihood is very low.
Almost certainly not. But it’s impossible to answer the question without knowing what (if any) radioactive substance was used in the statue and how much.
To give a little more background, the NRC gives a maximum permissible dose rate of 0.2 mrem/hour. Watches using radium paint are estimated to give off a dose rate of 3 mrem/year.