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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: average joe who wrote (12684)	5/19/2007 5:35:01 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36921

Beware the sand witch

To: average joe who wrote (12684)	5/20/2007 7:03:14 AM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36921

I would NOT recommend kids play with pitchblende. In German textbooks on the aetiology of lung cancer, as far back as 1879 [21] the term Schneeberg lung cancer is mentioned and the ore Pechblende, dumped in vast quantities on slag heaps as a waste material, obtained its name because of Pech used in the context of "bad luck". bjr.birjournals.org Any dust would be dangerous. Alpha radiation inside the body is most dangerous. See where it lies in this table. Alpha particles have a weighting factor of 20. All scientific tables give alpha particles the same destructive weighting btw. ============================================== Table 2 Recommended Radiation Weighting Factors Type and energy range Radiation weighting factor, WR Photons, all energies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Electron and muons, all energies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Neutronsa < 10 keV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 10 keV to 100 keV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 > 100 keV to 2 MeV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 > 2 MeV to 20 MeV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 > 20 MeV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Protons, other than recoil protons, > 2 MeV . . . . . . . . . . 5 Alpha particles, fission fragments, heavy nuclei . . . . . . . . . 20 ============================================================= ccohs.ca Uraninite (Pitchblende) has the same approximate radioactivity of DU of about 10k to 15k Bq per gram. uraniumminerals.com Granite has an activity of 0.05–0.5 Bq per gram by comparison. i.e. Pitchblende is approximately fifteen thousand times more radioactive then ordinary granite. I would not rip out a kitchen worktop made of granite, though radioactivity levels of granite vary considerably, but I would dump one made of pitchblend because of the radioactive risk for sure. I would get somebody else to pull it out and dump it too.