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Collectors who hunt down radioactive glassware
- labster 5y agoI’ve got a small collection of uranium glass. It’s always fun to crank up the black light when friends come over. And it looks great at Halloween. I have a couple pieces with manganese iirc which glows a faint orange. But it doesn’t compare to those nice emission lines off the uranium.
- yabones 5y agoIt's fun sticking a Geiger counter inside a uranium glass bowl and watching the CPM tick up... Really unnerves people. We fear radiation way more than we should, going outside and being exposed to the sun is way more dangerous than licking a uranium glass.
- labster 5y agoHeh, yeah. People sort of reflexively back away from the china cabinet. The toxicity of uranium is rather like lead: big heavy atom with lots of bonding available but really slow to move. But no one cowers from leaded crystal (except perhaps the State of California).
- airhead969 5y agoThe State of California can bite my grandparents' vintage leaded crystal decanters without the Jameo or Glenlivet 12. Edit: lead.. mmm. Yeah, I probably should only use them to serve, rather than store, to prevent bottle-chuggers. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/it-dangerous-store-alcoholic-beverages-decanters-made-lead-crystal https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/it-dangerous-store-alcohol... Also, wash your hands like after leaded soldering when handling the exteriors of alcoholic beverage containers: https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2019-06-28/study-glass-alcohol-bottles-contain-harmful-levels-of-lead-cadmium https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2019-06-2...
- airhead969 5y agoPilots, flight attendants, and passengers on the Concorde. Concrete. Radon.
- thih9 5y agoWhat do you mean? Could you elaborate?
- airhead969 5y agohttps://www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-sources-and-doses#averagedoses https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-sources-and-doses#av...
- thih9 5y agoI found no mention (cmd+f) of “concrete” or “concorde” there; I still don’t follow.
- Cerium 5y agoSometimes fly ash is added to concrete as a pozzolan. It is produced by burning coal and is slightly radioactive.
- david-gpu 5y agoThe Concorde cruised at higher altitude than most commercial planes, thus you had less protection from the atmosphere during the flight and received higher amounts radiation from cosmic rays. Then again it flew for a shorter duration, so I don't know which method of travel exposed you to higher accumulated radiation.
- MagLyse 5y agoI made a Geiger counter with 50 tubes and show here what happens when you put a Uranium-glazed plate on it: https://youtu.be/Iphv7i3IRRU https://youtu.be/Iphv7i3IRRU
- hellbannedguy 5y agoGood job. I thought the watch dials would be more radioactive than the plate. I'm a watchmaker, and know the radioactivity of old dials, and hands, are not dangerous unless snorting the inside of watches, but it is still on my mind when Servicing. Old Westclock dials/hands supposedly are higher in radioactivity than other brands. I've been thinking about building a Geiger counter in the cost is not to high.
- wearywanderer 5y agoAre there any modern glassblowers who will touch uranium glass? The few I talked to thought I was insane for thinking they'd consider it. (In my defense, cadmium is very toxic but glassblowers don't seem to mind blowing cadmium glass.)
- lumost 5y agoIIRC the main ingredient for uranium glass is processed uranium ore aka yellow cake. I don't believe there are any methods of purchasing this available to consumers. Inhalation of uranium is also a high risk during the glass blowing process particularly as the powder is mixed to the glass. This could probably be bounded to roughly the same risk as blowing waterford crystal if the glass is pre-mixed.
- domino24 5y agoWhat is in Waterford crystal? Is it dangerous in any point of the process?
- xref 5y agoWaterford is leaded glass, often just called “crystal” because of its clarity and to not call attention to the lead content which is minimum 25% lead oxide powder by weight https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_glass https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_glass > In a study performed at North Carolina State University, the amount of lead migration was measured for port wine stored in lead crystal decanters. After two days, lead levels were 89 µg/L (micrograms per liter). After four months, lead levels were between 2,000 and 5,000 µg/L. White wine doubled its lead content within an hour of storage and tripled it within four hours. Some brandy stored in lead crystal for over five years had lead levels around 20,000 µg/L For ref the EPA limit is 15 µg/L and even that is prob on the high side since the human body has 0 use for any level of lead
- sgtnoodle 5y agoThere's a guy on YouTube who goes by "nilered". He does various crazy chemistry projects. He has a video where he makes uranium glass.
- cratermoon 5y agoPreviously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27190249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27190249
- xattt 5y agoNot U glass, but I’ve been considering getting an orange Fiestaware set. I realize that modern dishes don’t contain U, but the symbolism is there. However, I still haven’t bothered to look up pricing or where to order, let alone of ways of convincing my spouse that we absolutely need bright orange dishes for the family for street cred with a very niche crowd.
- lumost 5y agoIt's quite economical to acquire small U-glass pieces. I have a pair of shot glasses made sometime between 1900 and 1930 which are great fun at parties. I grabbed the pair off of EBay for ~40 dollars. Now one must be a little careful with such glassware due to the modest risk of leaching. When my soon to be wife moved in she used the U-glass regularly not realizing the risk/special occasion only requirement.
- SaberTail 5y agoOther glasses that glow under UV: * Cerium (blue white) * Dysprosium (yellow-white) * Europium (orange) * Manganese (orange) * Samarium (orange) * Terbium (green) I've only been able to find small samples of these, so I don't know how much glassware there is compared to uranium, though.
- code_duck 5y agoGlass that glows in a blacklight was the rage in artistic borosilicate glassblowing in recent years, also. The physics behind this is pretty interesting (electrons jumping levels and releasing excess energy). We all started carrying around UV flashlights at shows. A US company called Northstar collaborated with Gaffer Glass from NZ to make a modern borosilicate uranium glass. https://northstarglass.com/product/ns-137-ill-umanati/ https://northstarglass.com/product/ns-137-ill-umanati/ Along with their competitor Glass Alchemy, they also make several other formulas that fluoresce different colors like pink and blue. (Also check out glass that changes color in fluorescent lamps: https://northstarglass.com/product/tag-069-parallax/ https://northstarglass.com/product/tag-069-parallax/ )
- mtreis86 5y agoMy friend, Ryan, (shameless shoutout) has been manufacturing glass for a while now, and has some very interesting polychromatic glass that changes all sorts of colors. https://greasy-glass-color.myshopify.com/collections/uv https://greasy-glass-color.myshopify.com/collections/uv
- code_duck 5y agoVery cool, I've used his glass a lot! Excellent quality and he has wonderful dedication. Ryan would be an awesome interview for HN, actually.
- dukeofdoom 5y agoSame craze for radioactive vintage lenses.
- xchaotic 5y agoFor cameras or prescription glasses??? If it’s the latter- it’s literally too close for comfort.
- terramex 5y agoFor cameras, usually those use thoriated glass due to its high refractive index. Radioactivity level is too low for even slightest damage as thorium dioxide mostly emits alpha particles that is easily blocked. There are urban legends about radioactive lenses causing fogging of the film inside a camera if left mounted for few years but I couldn't verify them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoriated_glass https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoriated_glass https://camerapedia.fandom.com/wiki/Radioactive_lenses https://camerapedia.fandom.com/wiki/Radioactive_lenses
- robmiller 5y agoThis is my dad. He's also a retired health physicist in nuclear power and now is distributing old civil defense Geiger counters to schools. Some other potential sources of radiation in the home are granite countertops, and of course radon...
- bobsmooth 5y agoAre you one of the three kids that will want this stuff shipped across the country?
- airhead969 5y agoI have one of those Geiger counters in disrepair.
- lostlogin 5y ago> Some other potential sources of radiation And mind the bananas.
- TheGallopedHigh 5y agoOr wood. Or basically most things. Just depends on the level you’re comfortable with.
- legulere 5y agoThe radiation from bananas is completely harmless though, as the body keeps the levels of radioactive potassium constant due to homeostasis.
- anovikov 5y agoActually radon is the only one to be really concerned about. Especially on first floors of poorly ventilated buildings with deep basements. It can be really harmful to one's health - granite countertops can't.
- xvector 5y ago> When the plate registered as radioactive, someone at the school panicked and called in a hazmat team. The entire school was evacuated Hope the school got called out for their incompetence. What hope do our children have if this is the competency our educators?
- thatguy0900 5y agoBetter to evacuate than deal with the parents, probably.
- gambiting 5y agoIf I were the parent there they would have to "deal" with me complaining about senseless and idiotic evacuation.
- thatguy0900 5y agoBut would you sue them or keep calling them about it for weeks?
- gambiting 5y agoI don't see what is there to sue for, but I'd definitely go and see the principal in person and explain why I think this was a bad idea, and encourage other parents to do the same - hopefully it would take enough of their time to be enough of a pain in the ass.
- ddingus 5y agoHaving been that parent, taking a lot of time counts for sure. So does talking to other parents. Bonus points for announcing that intent and then having them see other parents show up, and also take time.
- barry-cotter 5y agoMany primary school teachers can’t find the area of a rectangle and yet the US still has among the best Maths departments in the world. The determined effort to confuse the two notwithstanding, the main purpose of the K12 system is warehousing children, not education. To a truly remarkable extent incompetent teachers don’t matter.
- xchaotic 5y agoThe article just says the radiation is too low, but it matters to know. Some 30 years ago, it was possible to bring a glowing glass sphere as a souvenir from various Uranium mines in then Czechoslovakia. There were numerous reports of acute radiation illness and cancers after that - one couple kept the sphere on the cupboard and therefore were exposed to direct radiation for many hours every day. They both died with leukaemia and complications.
- adammunich 5y agoWhere can I read more about this?
- TRcontrarian 5y agoI've been to a few antiques stores where they have a blacklight case to show off the fluorescent uranium glass teacups and candlesticks. If you don't have a blacklight with you, it's tough to tell the difference between truly radioactive glass colored with uranium salts, and green-tinted depression glass produced at the same time last century that is neither radioactive nor fluorescent. Depression glass has an interesting story all its own https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_glass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_glass) It actually surprised me that you can buy uranium glass online on ebay or etsy. It's not controlled or anything, and there are some very weird old curios manufactured last century. (https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m570.l1313&_nkw=uranium+glass&_sacat=0 https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2380057.m...). I bought a tiny little salt cellar this way once the desire to own something radioactive overcame me. NileRed even made a video of manufacturing his own uranium glass https://youtu.be/RGw6fXprV9U?t=1048 https://youtu.be/RGw6fXprV9U?t=1048
- labster 5y agoIt’s actually fairly easy to own radioactive things. Bananas are fairly cheap, and potassium has a high enough radioactive fraction to give your body a few positron emissions a second. Of course your risk is still higher from slipping on the banana peel hilariously.
- airhead969 5y agoOh noes, a kid brought a banana to school. Call the hazmat team! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose Edit: The BER of an average piece of 25% U glass is about 1300 bananas. If it were possible to extract and enrich K40 from say 100 million bananas, you could kill everyone in the vicinity of it with a LD. 40 lbs box = 120 bananas at $13. So say $0.10 each. For a minimum investment of $10 million USD, you could have enough radioactive K40 to do some damage.. buried in tons of regular potassium that is expensive to enrich. Instead, for $10k / g, one could buy 1 kg of K40... if they could prove it was for a legitimate purpose.
- uyt 5y agoOn the opposite end of the spectrum, there are people who hunt down non-radioactive steel. Apparently the background radiation of the air increased after 1940s but there are equipment (like geiger counters) which need extremely low radiation for optimal sensitivity. The main source of these low background steel are currently from scavenging sunken naval ships! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
- robocat 5y agoAn article about virgin lead - low background lead for science equipment: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/search-dark-matter-depends-ancient-shipwrecks/600718/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/10/search-d... I first heard about it when I was working on gamma ray spectrometer software for detecting background radiation in environmental samples. The spectrometer needs lead shielding that ideally taints the sampling as little as possible.
- BrandoElFollito 5y agoAs for the fear of radiation, there is a fantastic xkcd with plenty of (relative) examples: https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/ Randall Munroe really has a strip for everything
- dosman33 5y agoThe article every so slightly touches on radium products but doesn't expand on what those are, I suppose that's to draw less attention to them. I sometimes take my Geiger counter with me when hitting flea-markets and such. In our area we have a very large fall festival way out in the country-side with lots of flea-markets setup. I found my first radium clock there, the guy selling it knew what was special about the clock and thought the geiger counter was neat, the piece I got gave off a mild CPM of about 600. This helped set the stage for me forgetting I live in a bubble of smart and educated and people around me at all times... Later that day I found another dealer with a large platter of antique watches. Woot! Pulled out the geiger counter again and found the tray had a number of very hot watches... and then I saw it. A radium dial watch missing the glass cover and covered in rust and dust, I only got a 20 second reading of around 6000CPM and then I realized my face was about 1 foot from this thing... The danger of radium clock hands is the paint flaking off and inhaling bits of radium dust. CPM is counts-per-minute, so that ~20 second reading I got before I was startled probably translates to ~18000CPM. I stopped and tried to explain to the dealer that he needed to take this watch and bag it and keep it away from the public, especially children that could have access. I was trying to explain what radium paint was and he stopped me and repeated "Radon what?". I tried again, he stopped again and repeated "Radon what?". It was at that moment my bubble collapsed and I realized I had gotten WAY off on the wrong foot. Radium was a word he had never heard, radon was the closest thing (it's not uncommon to have radon gas vents on house basements in our state to prevent buildups of radioactive radon gas). This guy got real quiet as I tried to dig myself out of my hold, but the damage was done. Another person working with him came over and I explained the issue to him, he understood but was making jokes about the government shutting them down or something. At this point I also remembered that there is a strong "prepper" vibe at this particular flea market area, and this poor fellow was probably afraid I'd someone get him "vanned" by the government. Anyway, I tried to buy some of the other watches from him and he outright told me he didn't want to talk to me any more, and that he was not going to sell me anything cause he didn't need for me to sue him for getting cancer or something. Right right, I'd dug a pretty large hole for myself and just needed to walk away, his weekend was ruined and now he had to figure out what to do with this radioactive watch he didn't understand at all. So, I learned a bunch of things really quick that weekend. One of those things is that our country-side is littered with radioactive artifacts that most people have NO idea about. Most of them are harmless, but the radium stuff is still dangerous for another 1600 years even though the radium paint stopped glowing many decades ago. When people randomly get strange cancers I can't help but wonder if there's a lot more incidental exposure that goes on than people realize. I'm not saying all cancer victims had exposure, but it probably happens more than people suspect. Another thing I learned was just how much of a bubble I exist in, and all of you reading this as well. You work with fellow smart people, your friends are smart. Probably your family too. My point is that we end up isolated from other classes of people and coming together is a good thing for multiple reasons. Think of those in classes above you too. Anyway, that's enough about that.
- crmrc114 5y agoI totally do this, I love going to antique store and estate sales looking for orange feistaware, aircraft instruments with radium, radium painted watches and clocks. Uranium Glass. Basically if it makes the meter tick and it looks cool it will get added to my collection. As long as it's not anything loose or dusty. I.e. radium watch with a busted glass cover. Don't forget thorium doped welding rods and thorium lantern mantles. :-) I miss bionerd23's YT videos.