Artifacts from a nuclear past (and present)

The Radon stories I wrote last week were a great deal of fun to work on. I learned so much and I'm forever grateful for my personal physicist and editor Chris. I did a lot of research independently prior to meeting Chris and one of the real finds from my digging around was the Home page of the Health Physics Instrumentation Collection.

Health Physics is a field of study that concerns itself with the proper uses of radioactivity in healthcare, industry and in homes. The HPIC is the project of Dr. Paul Frame, a Health Physicist at the Oak Ridge Associated Universities.

Frame's work is a museum and library of the history of his field and I found him through his collection of Radioactive Quack Cures. It was this collection where I found the Radon Suppositories here.

These quackeries don't come from some dark and gloomy past, they are all 20th century inventions and products. Some are available even now. I'm fascinated by this stuff and these radioactive quack cures share an alarming similarity with the quack cures being peddled today. Whether its detoxing diets, colon cleanses, the anti-vaccination movement, ionizing air filters or homeopathy; all of this quackery takes a scientific idea, turns it on its ear and then sells it to a gullible public. I think these things prey on many peoples' deep-seated fear of death and their wish for a quick fix and an easy answer. As anybody with any sense knows though, there aren't any quick fixes and there are even fewer easy answers.

Anyhow, check out these beauties.

This is the Radium Vitalizer Health Font (ca. 1925-30) and it was intended to be used to add Radium to drinking water. Radium-infused drinking water had all kinds of benefits attributed to it and before you laugh too hard, put down that bottle of anti-oxident-infused water in your hand. Interestingly, the glass this water fountain is made from is vaseline glass, and it got its green color from the addition of Uranium to molten glass. Vaseline glass is no longer manufactured, though you can still find in in antique stores. The Uranium in the glass isn't where the Radium Vitalizer Health Font got its oomph though, it got it from a Radium Emanator which is missing from this example.

Here's a Radium Emanator from the same era. This Emanator is made from cement mixed with Uranium ore. A Radium Emanator was intended to be submerged in drinking water in order to energize it for drinking.

This is a tube of World War II-era radioactive toothpaste. It contains trace amounts of Thorium and promised "Radioactively Bright Teeth!"

This is a Nicotine Alkaloid Control Plate. It's a metal plate with a Uranium ore coating on one . It's about the size of a credit card. It's also from 1990, believe it or not. These NACPs were intended to be inserted into a pack of cigarettes to render them safer. They were never sold in the US, but the amount of radioactivity it cranks out is small enough that it could have been.

This is a refrigerator deodorizer from 1983 and it contains a form of Thorium that will remain radioactive for the next ten billion years. 20,000 of these were sold and distributed in the US until the Nuclear Regulatory Agency shut down the importer behind them.

This is a Radium pillow filled with low-grade Uranium ore. It was made and sold in the US and was still available as 2004.

This is my personal favorite. This machine was called a Shoe Fitting Fluoroscope and was a common fixture in shoe stores in the 1930s, '40s and '50s. Believe it or not, this is an x-ray machine used as a gimmick to fit shoes. There was an x-ray tube in the base of the unit. The customer would put his or her foot in the hole at the base shown and then the salesman (or concerned parent) could see the x-rayed bones of the foot through the viewer a the top of the unit. There were 10,000 of these machines sold and used in the US alone.

Thank you Dr. Paul Frame for this collection, and thanks for the chance to see that the past doesn't have a lock on crazy.

Chinese drywall stinks!

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has a new section on their website dedicated to address concerns about Chinese-made drywall used in homes in the years 2006 and 2007. How widespread a problem this is remains to be seen. So far, there have been 365 complaints coming from 18 states and the District of Columbia.

From Consumer Reports:

Tests of the Chinese-made drywall conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency revealed that it contains at least three materials not found in drywall produced in the U.S. The tested drywall contained sulfur, strontium at levels ten times as high as in U.S. drywall and two other organic compounds generally found in acrylic paint that have not been detected in any U.S.-made wallboard.

“We now know there are three things in there that aren’t in other drywall samples,” said Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) who has been working to provide homeowners with relief. “We’ve got the ‘what’ and now we need the ‘why’—and, how do we fix it? In the end, I think all this stuff is going to have to be ripped out.”

People are noticing a rotten egg smell and that their copper plumbing and air conditioning coils are turning black. Clearly, that's from the elevated sulfur levels in the drywall. It's important to remember that this new cry is being raised by personal injury lawyers, so let the exaggerated claims begin.

So remember, there have been 365 complaints from people in 18 different states. But check out this copy from a personal injury attorney who specializes in Chinese drywall litigation:

The Chinese drywall housing crisis is spreading across this country. Tens of thousands of homeowners are suffering from contamination in their homes causing health problems and plunging property values. Defective Chinese drywall wrecks electrical systems, air conditioning systems, and exposed metal throughout your home. The sulfur contamination causes a terrible odor that will not go away, and creates a corrosive atmosphere that requires immediate attention. The members of our legal team are fighting for our clients across the country, including the battleground states of Florida and Virginia. Hidden legal deadlines in the construction or closing documents are shutting off many victims from making any recovery for this catastrophe. Don't let your dream home become a permanent nightmare: contact us for immediate legal assistance. 

I don't doubt for a second that this is a real issue and I'm not questioning that it's going to need to be fixed. But can we please proceed calmly? The sulfur is behind the rotten egg smell, but sulfur won't kill you. The potential problem here is the strontium levels, but strontium exposure doesn't have any glamorous symptoms. I'd be curious to know how it got there in the first place. It sounds like our great trading partners to the east are using fly ash to make drywall.

I know it's a lot to ask, but since I've already asked for calm, can we please learn a lesson from this too? First, it was lead in the toys. Then it was melamine in the dog food and baby formula. Cheap stuff from China has proven itself yet again, to be no bargain. Now, what steps can we take to avoid a repeat of this situation. Anyone? Anyone?

Jamie Drake, the King of Color

My great friend Kelly from Design Ties, had a sit down and interview with Jamie Drake this week. Jamie Drake is a Designer of Record, somebody other designers look to for inspiration and direction. He's also a pretty good interview subject.

This is Drake's Cabochon powder room for Kohler

Kelly's giving away an inscribed copy of his new book, New American Glamour. All you have to do is go to Design Ties and leave a comment after her interview. She's drawing the winner next Thursday, so get in while the getting's good.

Man oh geez!

Before:

After:

Here's the link: Lu Lu's Fluffy Ruffles. Someone sent this to me in the hopes of getting my blood pressure up. It worked. Who am I to knock somebody else's aesthetic sense though? You can do that yourself. Set yourself free Lu Lu, set yourself free.

Are my counters giving me a headache? Part two: radon and granite

Yesterday, I devoted a lot of space to answering a reader question about something she thought she'd heard about granite counters emitting a gas that gave her a headache and could make people sick.

She didn't know the words, but what she was asking about was Radon coming from granite counters. Yesterday's column defined the terms atom, radiation, radioactivity and radon. Now that I've established those terms, I'm going delve back into the topic and write about how Radon gets into granite counters and whether or not it's dangerous.

Uranium is a common atom in soil and rocks worldwide. Uranium is an unstable atom it sheds its extra parts to become Radon. Radon is a gas and it's also an unstable atom. As Radon sheds its extra parts, it forms four daughters. Inhaling these four daughter atoms in high concentrations and over a long period of time can increase the chances that who ever's breathing them may develop lung cancer.

So as I've been saying all along, Uranium, Radon and Radon's four daughters are all naturally occurring, common things. All life on earth is surrounded by these radioactive atoms and for the most part, they are harmless. It's a good thing they are because it is not possible to remove background radiation from the environment. Still with me?

Because Uranium is such a commonly-found material in the surface of the earth, anything that comes from the earth will have some traces of Uranium in it and will therefore be radioactive. Where there's Uranium, Radon and her four daughters are sure to follow.

How much Radon is in the environment naturally is dependent a lot of factors, the first being your location. Some bedrock has more Uranium and therefore Radon, than others. I found this map on the US Environmental Protection Agency's websites that shows the Radon distribution in the US. I know a lot of you who read this don't live in the US. I could not find a similar world map. If you're concerned about the Radon in your area, check with the environment ministry in your country.

In a lot of cases, these Radon hot zones also happen to be parts of the country with granite bedrock, but not always. Radon is a dense gas and it's heavier than air. It tends to pool in low areas and its presence comes and goes, even in a particularly rich Radon hot spot. Just because it's there, doesn't mean it's a problem. Radon is colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas. You cannot see it or sense that it's present. You cannot tell if you're breathing it either. Air movement makes it dissipate and that moving air dilutes it to the point of harmlessness. Radon can only be a problem if it's allowed to pool and in most homes, that can only happen in a basement. If you have Radon pooling in your unventilated basement, the only way to detect it is to have a Radon test performed by a Radon Mitigation Specialist. Radon testing is now mandatory in most parts of the US, and it has to be done every time a house sells. If it turns out that you have high levels of Radon in your home, then you need to have a ventilation system installed that's designed to vent Radon. It is not a big deal but Radon is something you don't want pooling in your basement. It's interesting to note that Radon mitigation systems are designed to dilute Radon, not eliminate it. Eliminating all traces of Radon is impossible. Please remember that.

Exposure to alpha particle radiation (that's the kind of radiation we're talking about) is unavoidable if you breathe air. But radiation exposure, like exposure to anything potentially dangerous, is a question of how much and for how long. Long-term exposure to high concentrations is the problem, not the radiation itself.

Granite comes from bedrock and some granites have Uranium in them. You cannot tell from looking at a slab of granite if it contains Uranium. Some stone yards are offering to send samples from a slab to a laboratory for analysis. If it makes people feel better, then why not? I say that it's unnecessary, but who am I to stop people from wasting their money?

It's not just me and my opinion here either. There is near unanimity in the scientific community when it comes to the safety of granite counters. Two leading authorities on indoor environmental exposures, Dr. John McCarthy, of Environmental Health & Engineering, and Dr. John D. Spengler,of the Harvard School of Public Health, recently concluded: “A considerable amount of research has been published in peer-reviewed scientific literature and all of it comes to the same conclusion: the levels of radon coming off a granite counter are not excessive and not showing any risk for the population in their homes.” Actual, peer-reviewed, real scientific studies show again and again that granite counters pose no risk to consumers. [1]

Now I've seen the YouTube videos of Geiger counters clicking away as they sit on granite counters, but those videos aren't really telling you a whole lot other than that there's radiation present. A Geiger counter can't tell you what kind of radiation it's detecting. When it comes to radiation threats, the kind of radiation means everything and the amount not so much. For kicks, I'd love to see some of these video makers hold a Geiger counter over some other common, radioactive objects. Smoke detectors, bricks, cinder blocks, Sheetrock, well water, spring water, ceramic dishes and other stuff that comes from the earth are also radioactive. Some foods like bananas and Brazil nuts are too. The potassium your body can't function without is radioactive, and so for that matter, are you.

I don't think that granite counters pose any kind of a Radon threat, though I'm sure some of them emit small amounts of Radon. However, there is simply not enough granite in a counter for the counter to cause a Radon problem. The real problem with Radon, if there is a problem, is in the bedrock under your house.

If you're concerned, by all means get some tests done. If there's a problem, by all means get it dealt with. The US EPA has a great website with a page dedicated to Radon testing and mitigation. At the end of the day though, I am confident enough that I will continue to specify granite counters (and bricks, and cinder blocks, and Sheetrock) and I will continue to hang out in stone yards.

Oh! And on a lighter note, there was a time in the not too distant past when Uranium, Radium and Radon were thought to be health foods. Radon was added to water to "fortify" it and Radium was available as a supplement. Most curious of all was that Radium was sold to men as a suppository. This box of Radium suppositories is from 1930.

Here's an excerpt from its accompanying pamphlet:

Weak Discouraged Men!

Now Bubble Over with Joyous Vitality

Through the Use of

Glands and Radium

". . . properly functioning glands make themselves known in a quick, brisk step, mental alertness and the ability to live and love in the fullest sense of the word . . . A man must be in a bad way indeed to sit back and be satisfied without the pleasures that are his birthright! . . . Try them and see what good results you get!"

Those suppositories are from a website called Radioactive Quack Cures. It's a riot and it ought to help put a new perspective on the Kenoki Foot Pads and Reiki Therapy quack cures of today.

[1] Independent research studies include those cited above, as well as:
• Al-Jarallah MI, et al. 2005. Correlation between radon exhalation and radium content in granite samples used as construction materials in Saudi Arabia. Radiation Measurements, 40, 625-629.
• NCRP Report No. 95. 1987. Radiation exposure of the U.S. population from consumer products and miscellaneous sources. National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. Bethesda, MD.