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Techniques for CollectorsRadioactive micromounts

19th Feb 2014 21:28 UTCGeorge deWit Chaney

I am fairly new to collecting specifically radioactive micromounts and have heard and watched on youtube various videos on how to be safe with radioactivity.

I understand that there are a few precautions to take forth when collecting radioactive minerals in general but are the risks so great with the micromounts as they are smaller and have a lot less mass? I would like to hear experience from people and what precautions they make with radioactive minerals particularly micromounts first hand as I am concerned for my obvious safety. Thank you for your time.

19th Feb 2014 23:07 UTCRui Nunes 🌟 Expert

Hi George,

Some common sense precautions: do not eat, lick or smell radioactive specimens. Store them in hermetic boxes and open them in a ventilated place. Wash hands thoroughly after handling them. That's it!

Cheers

Rui

19th Feb 2014 23:23 UTCDon Saathoff Expert

I agree completely.....my very first specimen, given to me in 1957, was a large carnotite- cemented sandstone from the Catahuila(sp) formation in South Texas. Just treat with respect and enjoy!!

Don

19th Feb 2014 23:31 UTCKelly Nash 🌟 Expert

I would like to hear from someone with a strong health physics background about this, because my recollection is that the eye is one of the most vulnerable parts of the body to radiation, although the actual exposure in this case is probably pretty low.

20th Feb 2014 01:00 UTCTony Albini

I collect radioactive macro specimens and just wash my hands and don't breathe in any small fragments. GMO foods will probably kill everyone a lot faster.

20th Feb 2014 02:04 UTCDoug Daniels

Kelly - unless you physically attach a radioactive micromount to your eye, you have little risk of exposure. Even use of a 10X lens will stop most alpha or beta radiation; won't do much to stop gamma, but you're getting hit by that from all around (especially from natural ground sources). As others says, don't eat the things, and wash your hands after handling, and you will be fine.

20th Feb 2014 07:18 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

Insignificant risk from micromounts, unless you eat them or snort them.

20th Feb 2014 07:30 UTCGeoff Van Horn Expert

Hello Kelly, I am a radiation protection technologist for the largest oilfield services company in the world. What Mr Nunes said is exactly right for naturally occurring radioactive materials. The biggest risk to you is inhaling or ingesting an alpha emitting isotope. Alpha particles are by far the most damaging type of ionizing radiation your going to come across in nature. Due to the size of alpha particles, they have almost no penetrating power. That is why you don't want to go about eating your specimens. As far as the gamma rays from your specimens, they are all going to be coming from daughter isotopes that result from the natural decay of uranium and thorium. The most harmful isotope you can encounter in appreciable amounts will be radium 226. This stuff is pretty nasty. An equal amount of radium is over a million times more radioactive than uranium. Fortunately it doesn't accumulate fast enough in your specimens to be of much concern. Another concern is radon. Radon is a heavier than air radioactive gas that is a part of the decay chain. However, without accumulating hundreds of pounds of ore, you won't have any problems from radon or radium. Keeping your specimens in a sealed container (not perky box) will keep the radon safely contained until it decays.

A while back I did a survey of all of my radioactive specimens. I have over 50 right now, with the most active being a large piece of uraninite from the Czech Republic. It measures over 60,000cpm with a thin window alpha, beta, gamma tube at 1cm. Most of my specimens come in around 2000-6000cpm. The uraninite comes in at .00000162 Curies. In my job I work with 2 main types of sources. 1-2 Curie Cs137 gamma ray sources and 10-12 Curie Am241Be neutron sources. I occasionally have to spend upwards of a minute working on an unshielded neutron source and have yet to experience an exposure anywhere near what would be considered unhealthy. Bottom line is, as long as you practice proper hygiene, you really have nothing to worry about.

20th Feb 2014 08:54 UTCGeorge deWit Chaney

Thanks guys, has helped a lot; and Geoff, very interesting to read :)

20th Feb 2014 11:38 UTCMaggie Wilson Expert

Kelly - I recall reading elsewhere on Mindat a post by Alysson Rowan, I believe, who is an authority of the subject. She wrote that the eyes ARE vulnerable to the radiation. If I have a chance, I'll try to find the reference.

Maggie

20th Feb 2014 11:49 UTCMaggie Wilson Expert

Found it!

Here's the thread http://www.mindat.org/mesg-6-114131.html

Click on the link The Care and Feeding of Radioactive Mineral Species for the full document and search for page 43 - or read it here:

Doses to Eyes and Face

This is an often overlooked area of radiation protection. The face is the most vulnerable part of the body to radiation when working with mineral specimens. Whilst the fingers may receive a larger radiation dose while preparing and handling mineralogical material, the face actually exposes living tissues to the world with no horny layer of skin to protect it. The eyes and mouth, and to a lesser extent the nose, are unshielded from alpha or beta radiations.

The main symptom of severe eye-exposure is the formation of milky cataracts. That of lip and similar mucous tissue exposure is similar to severe sunburn. Long-term effects may also include the appearance of cancerous tumours. When working with naturally occurring radioactive materials, eye protection is required. Safety glasses or ordinary spectacles absorb the hard alphas arising from some of the decay-chain nuclides as well as partially shielding the eyes from beta radiation.

A bench-mounted face shield of at least a few millimetres of clear acrylic is most highly recommended. For collectors of extremely high activity mineral specimens, a proprietary lead-acrylic co-polymer face shield is definitely recommended.

Under no circumstances should a radioactive specimen be examined through a small hand-lens or a jeweller’s loupe, as this will expose the eye and surrounding tissue to the elevated dose found in close proximity to the specimen.

20th Feb 2014 16:38 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

Also, I wouldn't store them under your bed.

20th Feb 2014 21:03 UTCDonald Peck

Or carry them in your trouser's pockets.

8th Apr 2014 05:22 UTCDavid Garske

One of the guys I went to college with worked for the old Atomic Energy Commission, and apparently did keep his radioactive collection under his bed. I heard a few years ago that he and his wife died of radioactive induced problems. Along a similar line, I was raised in Portage, Michigan. A couple who were friends of my parents had a cousin who was the accountant of the Daybreak mine. They had several of the world's finest autunite specimens, to a foot across with 3-4 inch crystals, that they kept in their bedroom. Again died of cancer.

Dave

4th Sep 2015 16:03 UTCJay I. G. Roland

I well remember my old physics master Mr. Gregory (Lady Manners School, Bakewell) telling us that if we might want to have children in the future, keep all specimens (handed around the class) well away from one's reproductive organs!

I went on to sire just 2 girls so perhaps I only listened with one ear :-D

4th Sep 2015 16:46 UTCReiner Mielke Expert

I imagine there are a lot of people who died of cancer with no radioactive minerals near them. Lets see some hard data with proper statistical analysis before we jump to conclusions. By the way don't they use radioactive isotopes to cure cancer?

4th Sep 2015 17:44 UTCD. Peck

Back about 1980 I was the supervisor for science curriculum and instruction in a moderate sized school district (ca 14,000 students) At the time there was a lot of discussion about radioactive materials in the schools so one of our physics teachers undertook a small study. He measured the radiation levels from the few radioactive minerals and isotopes we had in the high school. At a distance of one meter from the individual pieces . . .and the aggregated collection . . .the radiation level became indistinguishable from background radiation. Never-the-less, we bought concrete garden containers with tops. The concrete was about 3 or 4 cm thick and there was no radiation above background outside it when the radioactive materials were stored within.

4th Sep 2015 18:00 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

Some related food for thought (article in the medical journal The Lancet):

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhae/article/PIIS2352-3026%2815%2900094-0/abstract

Provides strong evidence of positive associations between protracted low-dose radiation exposure and leukaemia in radiation-monitored adults employed in France, the UK, and the USA (mainly people working in nuclear power plants).

4th Sep 2015 18:14 UTCReiner Mielke Expert

Another interesting fact is that the highest rates of leukemia are in Iraq (>11 deaths per 100,000) followed by Afghanistan (10) . Could depleted uranium projectiles have something to do with this?

4th Sep 2015 22:00 UTCDana Morong

I suspect that habitually keeping radioactive collections under the bed is hazardous, because any radon gas released might be breathed, and as one spends several hours a night on the bed, when the body is supposed to be repairing itself, it might be eventually harmful. Best to store them somewhere you won't be breathing radon a lot. Another that I have heard about is in opening a sealed box and getting a breath of radon (or products?). Viewing them through several lens in a stereo microscope is probably not too hazardous.

Close eye exposure could be harmful. I read about a man who in his youth often liked to view radium (this was very many years ago) through his eyelids - the rays went through his closed eyelids and made sparkles on his retina, as he described it (people didn't think about those hazards at that time). Later in life, when he was elderly, he got cancer in one eye, and I always wondered whether it was the eye that he had used to view the radium so close-up. As he is one of my heroes, I decline to name him here, but he was a great man and I am glad that he wrote so many books, in such a thoughtful and interesting manner, before he passed away.

5th Sep 2015 01:27 UTCPavel Kartashov Manager

I copy here my post from this http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,59,108437,117961#msg-117961 old topic.

Hi all.

The problem was discussed on mindat many times but only qualitatively, on fingers. It seems to me, that experimental quantitative data would be interesting for evrybody.

This is naturexperiment:

specimen - 4x2.5x1.7 cm 52 g natural pseudomorphose of gummite after uraninite xl from Karelia

natural radioactivity on my table 25 µR/h

A - experiments in air - specimen is covered by newspaper and polyethilen (2-3 layer of both):
tightly to detector 2283 µR/h (butt 2.5x1.7=4.2 cm2) - 4253 µR/h (side 4x2.5=10 cm2)
3 cm from detector 1225 µR/h butt - 1814 µR/h side
30 cm from detector 60 µR/h butt - 83 µR/h side

B - specimen deposited in the lead tube container with 16 mm walls - 536 µR/h butt - 858 µR/h side (tightly to detector)

the same container within outer foam plastic cover with 16 mm walls - 277 µR/h butt - 494 µR/h side (tightly to detector).

Weight of the lead container itself is 2700 g, with foam plastic cover - 2750 g. Size of the ready-mounted container is : l -16 cm, d- 9.5 cm.

Compare sizes and weights of the specimen and the container with radioactivity data..

5th Sep 2015 01:46 UTCPavel Kartashov Manager

Reiner Mielke Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Another interesting fact is that the highest rates

> of leukemia are in Iraq (>11 deaths per 100,000)

> followed by Afghanistan (10) . Could depleted

> uranium projectiles have something to do with

> this?

Do you know such statistics for Serbia, where uranium powder had been pulverizing from NATO's aircrafts deliberately? I am suppose you'll never find it.

5th Sep 2015 02:12 UTCReiner Mielke Expert

Hello Pavel,

Do I understand this correctly? In case A) the radiation was reduced by approx. half with 30mm of air but in case B) it was reduced by approx.half with just 16mm of foam? I would not have thought that foam was such a good shield but I guess it is. I wonder what exactly low levels of radiation means? The KCl salt substitute I eat emits low levels of gamma radiation but is that too low to be concerned? You are right we will probably not find out the effects on Serbia for a long time.

5th Sep 2015 02:31 UTCPavel Kartashov Manager

30 cm of air is better than 16 mm of lead.

Styrofoam contains a lot of hydrogen and so it is good protector against neutron radiation. I used multiaimed lead container equipped styrofoam envelope. For natural radioactive minerals neutron protection isn't too actual, of course. So all owners such containers whom I know, got rid of these envelopes to minimize sizes of these containers. But I had a new one and used all possibilities for measurings. As you may to see, they put these envelopes in garbage in vain - they are quite effective and against gamma-rays. This allowed me to have some small, but angry specimens on my table, right under hands.

9th Sep 2015 00:30 UTCPaul Stephen Cyr

I can add that these minerals constantly emit radioactive vapors, so you might want to invest in a surplus gas mask and take them outside and open them all to ventilate on the regular. Also curious to know how you are storing them. I told myself that if I ever decide to acquire radioactive specimens, I will construct a lead box (ideally with ventilation capability) and keep it outside to quarantine the vapors. Good luck on your collection George, and stay safe!

Paul

9th Sep 2015 01:23 UTCDoug Daniels

The only radioactive "vapor" emitted is radon (an inert, but radioactive gas). There is likely little being emitted (you may get more exposure from your natural soil/bedrock), and anyways it has a very short half-life (3-4 days). The only concern with radon is if you inhale an atom of it, and it decays in your lungs, when it becomes a metal and then deposits on your lung tissue. Again, you may be breathing much more sourced in your local soil and bedrock.

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