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> 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 cal

> 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 ago
Better to evacuate than deal with the parents, probably.
- gambiting 5y ago
  If I were the parent there they would have to "deal" with me complaining about senseless and idiotic evacuation.
  - thatguy0900 5y ago
    But would you sue them or keep calling them about it for weeks?
    - gambiting 5y ago
      I 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 ago
        Having 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 ago
Many 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.
Gibbon1 5y ago
> incompetence Knowing what's above your pay grade is the exact opposite of incompetence.
Pxtl 5y ago
Isn't this the exact time to err on the side of caution? If you know nothing about uranium glass, how are you to know that this won't be another Goiania incident? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- uyt 5y ago
  This was really interesting to read. You should submit this as a post on its own.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  > If you know nothing about uranium glass, how are you to know that this won't be another Goiania incident? The tool they used to detect the radiation was also giving the answer. Look up the dose then get excited.
- curryst 5y ago
  Erring on the side of caution here would mean sending the student home for the day with his plate, and a note that says "student was sent home because we're uncomfortable with any level of radioactive materials in the school. They're not in trouble, but please don't do it again". It's still more than is really necessary, but I can understand not wanting to expose other people's children to any level of unnecessary radiation. There's a huge difference between "a thing designed to eat out of, with radioactivity as a trinket" and "a thing literally designed to cause cell death". Even in the era when radiation was marketed as healthy, we weren't giving people doses anywhere close to the output from that radiotherapy source. That thing was outputting almost 5 Grays per hour at a meter away. You would have a high enough dose for Acute Radiation Syndrome after 12 minutes of exposure at a meter away. A little over an hour of exposure puts you in the "probably going to die even if you get to a hospital" range, and 6 hours puts you in the "there's nothing we can do for you, you'll be dead in less than 48 hours" range. It's just nonsensical for a consumer product, even in ye olden days. People would have noticed that anyone who bought the glassware almost immediately became seriously ill with mysterious symptoms. There are lots of products from then that had more radiation than was healthy, but it was in the "long term exposure is going to cause cancer or other diseases" form, not the "you are going to die imminently" form. Even in the Radium Girls, who were ingesting radioactive paint, it took 6 years from the opening of the factory to the first recorded death. They also had an unusual method of exposure; I'm willing to bet nobody at the school was debating eating the plate. The student would have been dead or severely ill if it were anywhere close to Goiania. Acute Radiation Syndrome has a fast onset; the longest time between exposure and symptoms listed is 6 hours. The fact that the student appeared to be healthy should tell you that the dose isn't immediately dangerous. That it sat in an antique store (pulled from another article) without the owner falling over dead should be another clue. Further, this was just a quarter sized shard of a plate, so the owner presumably has several. If one of these shards emitted a dangerous level of radiation, the whole pile in the antique store would have poisoned an entire neighborhood. The student also brought a Geiger counter, so they don't even have to guess at what the dose was; they could measure it and go from there.

thatguy0900 5y ago

Better to evacuate than deal with the parents, probably.

gambiting 5y ago
If I were the parent there they would have to "deal" with me complaining about senseless and idiotic evacuation.
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  But would you sue them or keep calling them about it for weeks?
  - gambiting 5y ago
    I 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 ago
      Having 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 ago

Many 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.

Gibbon1 5y ago

> incompetence Knowing what's above your pay grade is the exact opposite of incompetence.

Pxtl 5y ago

Isn't this the exact time to err on the side of caution? If you know nothing about uranium glass, how are you to know that this won't be another Goiania incident? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
uyt 5y ago
This was really interesting to read. You should submit this as a post on its own.
lostlogin 5y ago
> If you know nothing about uranium glass, how are you to know that this won't be another Goiania incident? The tool they used to detect the radiation was also giving the answer. Look up the dose then get excited.
curryst 5y ago
Erring on the side of caution here would mean sending the student home for the day with his plate, and a note that says "student was sent home because we're uncomfortable with any level of radioactive materials in the school. They're not in trouble, but please don't do it again". It's still more than is really necessary, but I can understand not wanting to expose other people's children to any level of unnecessary radiation. There's a huge difference between "a thing designed to eat out of, with radioactivity as a trinket" and "a thing literally designed to cause cell death". Even in the era when radiation was marketed as healthy, we weren't giving people doses anywhere close to the output from that radiotherapy source. That thing was outputting almost 5 Grays per hour at a meter away. You would have a high enough dose for Acute Radiation Syndrome after 12 minutes of exposure at a meter away. A little over an hour of exposure puts you in the "probably going to die even if you get to a hospital" range, and 6 hours puts you in the "there's nothing we can do for you, you'll be dead in less than 48 hours" range. It's just nonsensical for a consumer product, even in ye olden days. People would have noticed that anyone who bought the glassware almost immediately became seriously ill with mysterious symptoms. There are lots of products from then that had more radiation than was healthy, but it was in the "long term exposure is going to cause cancer or other diseases" form, not the "you are going to die imminently" form. Even in the Radium Girls, who were ingesting radioactive paint, it took 6 years from the opening of the factory to the first recorded death. They also had an unusual method of exposure; I'm willing to bet nobody at the school was debating eating the plate. The student would have been dead or severely ill if it were anywhere close to Goiania. Acute Radiation Syndrome has a fast onset; the longest time between exposure and symptoms listed is 6 hours. The fact that the student appeared to be healthy should tell you that the dose isn't immediately dangerous. That it sat in an antique store (pulled from another article) without the owner falling over dead should be another clue. Further, this was just a quarter sized shard of a plate, so the owner presumably has several. If one of these shards emitted a dangerous level of radiation, the whole pile in the antique store would have poisoned an entire neighborhood. The student also brought a Geiger counter, so they don't even have to guess at what the dose was; they could measure it and go from there.