NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Radium illumination
From: Marcel Tschudin
Date: 2010 Sep 8, 14:53 +0300
From: Marcel Tschudin
Date: 2010 Sep 8, 14:53 +0300
It is a very long time ago when I was interested once to find for certain substances their lethal volume. I don't remember in detail how I proceeded. So please take what I remember with caution. Douglas Denny may eventually recognise what I remember wrong and may eventually correct/clarify it. The lethal quantities for poisons are generally given in grams, with the density one obtains the volume. For radioactive material there were two aspects, the lethal radioactive dose or/and its property as a poison which depends also on the human organ which receives the material. The most severe of these poisons turned out to be Plutonium where a very, very tiny volume was lethal when it reached the most sensitive organ. Tritium was mentioned in the context of marking dials. The tritium gas (heavy hydrogen) itself is not so dangerous. However, when it comes into the air it produces a vapour of tritium-water which is very, very toxic. One sniff of it through your nose is lethal. The problem is not always the radioactivity of a substance, but also its toxicity. Marcel