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U-Bahn station in Berlin is decorated with radioactive uranium glazed tiles
- Traubenfuchs 4y agoWe have a long tradition of uran-containing glass and ceramic objects/tiles/decoration/tableware. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_tile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_tile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_glass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_glass
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- albertzeyer 4y agohttps://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose I'm not really sure about the unit of the measure here. So how does it compare really? You need to realize, we are exposed to radiation all the time.
- stefantalpalaru 4y ago> https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose The "banana equivalent dose" is an error that refuses to die. Based on tables that estimate the effect of various radioactive isotopes acting for 50 years, people ignoring physiology decided that the average K40 in a banana will produce 0.078 microsievert of damage (rounded to 0.1 because it's close enough for jazz and comics). The reality is that, due to homoeostasis, the excess potassium you ingest is eliminated the next time you piss, so there's no accumulation inside the organism. Those 50 years become something like 12 hours and the radiation exposure is more in the ballpark of 0.00000213 microsievert. But that value is now too small to use it in science fanboyism, isn't it? https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-05/documents/520-1-88-020.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-05/documents/52... - page 156. That's where these people took the effective dose equivalent for K^40 from, but those values are for 50 years of exposure. "For radioisotopes of elements that are under tight homeostatic control by the human body, the inhalation or ingestion risk coefficients given in this document may not be appropriate for application to some exposure scenarios. For example, the ingestion risk coefficient for ^(40)K would not be appropriate for application to ingestion of ^(40)K in conjunction with an elevated intake of natural potassium. This is because the biokinetic model for potassium used in this document represents the relatively slow removal of potassium (biological half-time of 30 d) that is estimated to occur for typical intakes of potassium, whereas an elevated intake of potassium would result in excretion of a nearly equal mass of natural potassium, and hence of ^(40)K, over a short period." - ["Federal Guidance Report No. 13: Cancer Risk Coefficients for Environmental Exposure to Radionuclides"](https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-05/documents/402-r-99-001.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-05/documents/40...) - page 16 So, if you accept that the duration of exposure from eating a banana is 12 hours instead of 50 years, a dental x-ray is the equivalent of eating 2,347,417 bananas.
- the_af 4y ago> But that value is now too small to use it in science fanboyism, isn't it? I don't understand, what is "science fanboyism"?
- stefantalpalaru 4y ago[dead]
- funnym0nk3y 4y agoI'm very surprised that radiation workers are allowed half the dose which is directly linked to cancer. Especially because you get that dose in two years, imagine how much you get over a 40 year career.
- retrac 4y agoGenerally kept lower than that. Exceeding the human exposure threshold for a worker amounts to an international nuclear incident. Literally. Must be reported and the IAEA will do a full investigation and eventually assign it an International Nuclear Event Scale number. (7 = Chernobyl. 2 = Worker dropped a small vial of tritium gas and breathed it in.)
- Nitrolo 4y agoEDIT: Someone linked to the Wikipedia article for uranium tiles, which says that the majority of the radiation comes from the decay products and is beta radiation[1]. Beta radiation has a weighing factor of 1, which means it's about 0.1 mSv/h. For comparison Wikipedia says: "90 μSv/h: Natural radiation on a monazite beach near Guarapari, Brazil." ================ EDIT 2: Looking more closely it appears that the dosimeter in the video is switched to µSv/h, so it's reading 0.1 mSv/h anyway and the whole discussion below can be skipped if you're not interested in the difference between Gy and Sv. ========== Seems to be milliroentgen/h according to another commenter, which is an older unit. Today you'd use Gray (Gy), which is 1 J/kg of energy deposited in material, and Sievert (Sv), which is Gy adjusted by a factor to account for different radiation types and body parts to get comparable biological effects. For soft tissue (~= humans) 1 R = 0.01 Gy, so the dose would be ~0.1 mGy/h. Converting that to Sievert is more complicated. Uranium is an alpha emitter, for which you'd use a weighing factor of 20 [0], getting 2mSv/h. 1 mSv/h = "NRC definition of a high radiation area in a nuclear power plant, warranting a chain-link fence." [0] However alpha radiation also gets blocked by very flimsy barriers, such as a few cm of air, or the layer of dead skin cells on your skin. So the effective dose might be closer to 0! You also have to consider that the decay products or Uranium are beta emitters. Beta rays have a weighing factor of 1, but they do penetrate deeper (stopped by a few feet of air, can penetrate the skin). The real effective dose in Sv depends on the exact ratio of decay products to U-238, and how deeply the beta rays of those products penetrate your body (there's different weighing factors for different body parts!). In conclusion: probably not too much, but radiation and radiation shielding is a complicated subject we managed to spend a whole semester on. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_tile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_tile
- vinaypai 4y agoGiven the level of radioactivity, it's safe to say you should not eat an excessive number of these tiles.
- DJBunnies 4y agoHello there, fellow collector-but-not-eater!
- mhd 4y agoI think that type of glazing was once somewhat popular for dinnerware. Gladly that got solved by the colors becoming quite unpopular after the 70s. (I'm aware that I'm writing this on "the orange site"…)
- Bedon292 4y agoYes, Fiestaware. Where the most popular color was red, which originally used natural uranium oxide as the pigment in the glaze. It was actually WWII that saw the US government confiscate their stock of uranium in 1943. They used depleted uranium from 1959 to 1973 when the finally discontinued the red color. And an estimated 2 million pieces sold between 1959 and 1969. [1] And people collect them. I remember being a kid and looking at my grandmother's display of plates and being told they were radioactive. But only a little. You can also still find them on eBay easy enough. [1] https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/consumer/ceramics/fiestaware.html https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/consum...
- exo-cortex 4y agoHm.... I've spent a lot of waiting time in this station (Rosenthaler Platz) over the years. And these tiles (in different colors though) are in a considerable amount of Berlin subway stations. Are they all radioactive like these here? Or is it only caused by the orange pigment?
- rcme 4y agoThe orange pigment was made with uranium.
- gilleain 4y agoSpecifically, Uranium Oxide (UO2, I guess? Or maybe the trioxide?): https://blog.colornavigator.net/dangerous-colors https://blog.colornavigator.net/dangerous-colors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_trioxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_trioxide
- stavros 4y agoHow many bananas is that like being exposed to?
- yenda 4y agoI would say a truckload, because bananas radiations are making just a bit more crack noises than the background, here the Geiger counter go crazy. But without the background reading and units it's hard to tell
- throw_a_grenade 4y agoFor completeness, can we also get the measurement in dishwashers and american football fields?
- stavros 4y agoWait, are American football fields particularly radioactive?
- throw_a_grenade 4y agoSerious answer would be, it depends on the underlying soil. Granite is particularly radioactive, to the point that yearly exposure to background radiation in Scandinavia (a granite penninsula) would be considered as crossing threshold of general population exposure to artificial sources (i.e. over background) in my country. Also, famously, the dose of radiation in one of the long term storage facilities nearby (measured on the floor, outside containers) is lower than in the main church in that town, which, you've guessed it, is built from granite blocks.
- fghorow 4y agoIt's not just granites or other igneous rocks. A major rock-forming mineral is Potassium Feldspar (K-spar to geologists). The weathering products of K-spar include many varieties of clay. Those, in turn, wind up incorporated in sedimentary rocks When logging a well for permeability -- an activity that occurs for both hydrocarbon and geothermal projects -- detection of radio-emissions due to K is an indicator of sedimentary strata that are unlikely to have much permeability because the clays clog up the fluid-flow pathways. This has been today's lesson in geoscience. :D (Edit: typo.)
- xroche 4y agoEverything is radioactive. https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/everything-emits-radiation-even-you https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/everything-emits-rad...
- SnowHill9902 4y agoAll things are radioactive but some things are more radioactive than others.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoOld watches used radium dials. This reminds me of cloisonné paint. Many antique pendants, earrings, etc., used Uranium Oxide orange paint. Orange is actually a difficult color to make. Another dangerous orange is Cadmium Orange (I used to be an artist, and probably breathed in the paint, as I used it in an airbrush).
- matheweis 4y ago> Old watches used radium dials. Some new watches have luminescent dials that contain tritium, also a radioisotope.
- jesperwe 4y agoMake me worry more about conditions for the workers in the tile factory than for the U-Bahn travellers...
- mseepgood 4y agoThey're long dead, even if they survived the war. This was built more than 90 years ago.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mahathu 4y agoThere are around half a dozen or so homeless people sleeping in this particular station every night, way more now during winter. I'm worried about them. Not like they didn't have enough issues besides the walls they sleep next to being radioactive.
- rom-antics 4y agoThis seems like a particularly evil example of hostile architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture
- Raydovsky 4y agoI think in Germamy the danger of radiation is overblown. It's really hard to get any radiation damage from low intensity sources. Hell, even chernobyl is projected to cause at most 4k premature deaths over 50+ years.
- durnygbur 4y agoYou are about 80 years too late to worry about Polish and Jewish slave labourers.
- heywhatupboys 4y agonot everything in Germany in the 1930's was built by slave labour
- aaron695 4y ago[dead]
- Koshkin 4y agoU-238 must be pretty safe, given its long half-life?
- russianGuy83829 4y agoDidn't know they had so many Ubahn lines in Berlin, though it went from U1 to U9 ;)
- mpetrovich 4y agoNo, he’s talking about the movie. You know, the one with the sub.
- hef19898 4y agoBecause I felt like it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-239 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-239
- scrlk 4y agoFor those wondering, the units on the dosimeter might be milliroentgen/h. One of the replies mentions that it's a RKS 20.03 "Pripyat" dosimeter. 11.37 mR/h? Not great, not terrible.
- H8crilA 4y agoIf I'm not mistaken that's 0.1137 milisievert / hour. Meaning you have to stand glued to the tiles for about 4 years to get the LD50 lethal dose of about 4000 Sievert. Also, the lethality of the dose only really applies when the exposure is short. Or, alternatively, the average yearly background radiation of about 2 milisievert takes about 18 hours of being glued to those tiles.
- bioemerl 4y agoThe real danger is the tiles, it's that throws something hard, shatters one of the tiles, releases dust, and someone breathes the dust in. I'm actually astounded this is allowed to be there in a public place, because at home you can reasonably expect protect against someone shattering a tile, but in public? One drunk guy is all you need.
- tomxor 4y agoThat's most likely the reason they are still there, because of how much more hazardous it would be to attempt to remove them. Then again there are well practiced methods for removing sources of similarly hazardous air-bourn particulates such as asbestos, i'm not sure how much difference there is between the two beyond the low risk of pure exposure (inhalation being the serious risk here).
- sofixa 4y ago> Then again there are well practiced methods for removing sources of similarly hazardous air-bourn particulates such as asbestos, i'm not sure how much difference there is between the two beyond the low risk of pure exposure (inhalation being the serious risk here). There's also the difference that this is a U-Bahn station in use, in the rough middle of a line. Closing it down for a prolonged period of time, and fully sealing it from the rest of the line to avoid the spread of dust through the metro tunnels would be a significant and disruptive undertaking.
- louthy 4y agoI assume this is what Kraftwerk were banging on about
- janlukacs 4y agoTrans-Europe Express!
- boomboomsubban 4y agoKraftwerk famously sing about above ground trains, with "Trans-Europe Express," the freeway, with "Autobahn," and radioactivity, with "Radioactivity," but nothing I know of about the subway.
- jillesvangurp 4y agoAh that's actually my local ubahn station. I assume the risk is pretty minimal. Unless you spend a lot of time in close proximity to those tiles. Like some homeless people seem to be doing.
- junon 4y agoWelp. No idea how many times I've walked through there....
- gpjanik 4y agoQuite a few homeless people stay around for the entire day in this station, leaning against these tiles all the time. Would anyone be able to tell if this is a health risk?
- snitch182 4y agoNo it is not. The station would be locked otherwise.
- gpjanik 4y agoThat's poor reasoning.
- wongarsu 4y agoIf they are always sitting in front of the tiles, leaning on them with their back, they might have higher skin cancer rates on their back. But generally, the effect of frequent low doses isn't very well understood, and you could even find specific circumstances where it might be beneficial.
- kzrdude 4y agoIt's likely a coat is enough to shield the alpha and beta decays completely
- nemo44x 4y agoBeing homeless is probably a much greater health risk. Especially the cigarettes everyone still smokes in Berlin.
- crucialfelix 4y agoSmoking cigarettes is much rarer than it used to be here. But I've seen homeless guys openly smoking Heroin in the U-Bahn stations. And many of them drink a lot of alcohol.
- dTal 4y ago"No loitering"
- I_am_tiberius 4y agoDoes this concern stations in the eastern part of Berlin only (former DDR part)?
- smcl 4y agoThe station was built in 1930, so the concept of DDR/BRD didn't exist yet
- kreldjarn 4y agoThere are also radioactive tiles decorating the Caltech campus: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lapie/3340318920/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/lapie/3340318920/ Apparently there was a brief period in the 20th century when this was a popular way of making yellow glazing.
- cultofmetatron 4y agogoogle "radium girls"
- cultofmetatron 4y agonot sure why I was downloaded. the radium girls painted radium on dials which glowed
- jonty 4y agoThis is my toot, but the credit (and possibly the link) should be to @gigabecquerel: https://chaos.social/@gigabecquerel/109818433760462038 https://chaos.social/@gigabecquerel/109818433760462038 There are other stations on the U-Bahn with uranium tiles too, you can find them with the crowdsourced Safecast radiation map: https://map.safecast.org/?y=52.5002&x=13.4852&z=13&l=0&m=9 https://map.safecast.org/?y=52.5002&x=13.4852&z=13&l=0&m=9
- dewey 4y agoThanks! I parsed that toot wrongly, should've submitted the other URL. Maybe dang can update it. (Wish we had quote-posts on Mastodon, would make it more obvious)
- jordigh 4y agoI don't like the idea of Twitter-like quoting. Linking to the original toot is fine, it's clear that there's a link. The Twitter-like quoting was used way too much for abuse. It had legitimate uses, but the abuse it generates does not warrant the legitimate uses. Plus, it always made things so weird to read. 2. The reply 1. The original 3. The replies to the reply You say you find linking confusing right now, but it's just a matter of getting used again to the idea that links exist and can be followed, without always having a link preview. I find Twitter-quoting confusing because it messes up the order of the conversation.
- dewey 4y agoDon’t want to start a side discussion here, but what I like about quote tweets is that I can see the quoted content without having to click out to another tab and go back and forth. Could probably handled with some auto-expanding by clients though.
- mlindner 4y agoCan we just call them "posts" instead of "toot"?
- gus_massa 4y agoIt's strange that the count increase too much near the wall. If you have a 1/r^2 decreasement from a point source, the if you have an infinite wall it becomes a constant value that does not decrease with the distance. Clearly the wall is not infinite, but when the distance from the wall is much smaller (1/5?) than the distance to the border of the wall, the approximation is good enough. The wall is like 8 tiles tall , so I expect the radioactivity at 1/2 tile (15cm, 5in) to be almost equal to the radioactivity when the counter is touching the wall.
- perihelions 4y agoYes, I noticed that too. I think it's mainly beta radiation close to the wall. It would be attenuated by air absorption further away.
- gnramires 4y agoGood question. Another intuitive way to view (no pun intended) 1/r^2 law is that the solid angle visible from an isotropic emitter (like supposedly this wall) gives the exact decay coefficient. So near the surface the solid angle is like 1/2 sphere (1/2 4pi), and doesn't change much with distance. Only when you get a bit further away it starts to decrease. Eventually at large distances, any finite object will have the apparent radius decay as 1/r and solid angle as 1/r^2. I think in this case it could be atmospheric absorption or just getting near a peak point of emission.
- penteract 4y agoDoes that apply if the emitter is neither coherent nor opaque? If we were interested in gamma radiation, is the sum from each part of an infinite wall infinite (if we pretend the wall and the air are perfectly transparent to gamma rays)?
- gnramires 4y agoNote that in this case radiation is definitely incoherent. This rule applies to incoherent isotropic emission. The coherent case is similar I believe, but because for an antenna (emitter) the field is usually tangent to the surface, you get some additional trigonometric factors (not purely solid angle). But by my calculations it's still 1/r^2.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- azubinski 4y ago"Uranium tiles" are well known. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_tile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_tile Personal radiation doses are well known. https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/around-us/calculator.html https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/around-us/calculator... Social. Chaos. OK.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y ago> Social. Chaos. OK "Chaos" likely relates to "Chaos Computer Club" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Computer_Club https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Computer_Club and related activities in that part of the world. A person running around Berlin with a Geiger counter (not on official business) is a CCC kind of hacker. Of course this comes to us via Jonty Wareing (@jonty@chaos.social ), who is involved with the related EMF ( https://www.emfcamp.org/ https://www.emfcamp.org/ ) event in the UK. The Suffix "social" means "this is the social media (mastodon) host". In fact it says here https://chaos.social https://chaos.social "chaos.social – a Fediverse instance for & by the Chaos community"
- ff10 4y agoApparently the amount of radiation is safe: > Auch an einem eher ungewöhnlichen Ort haben die Mitarbeiter der Behörde schon Messungen durchgeführt. Der U-Bahnhof Rosenthaler Platz rückte wegen seiner vielen orangefarbenen Kacheln ins Visier der Behörde. „Die Farbe wird mit dem Schwermetall Uran hergestellt, weil es beim Brennvorgang sehr hitzebeständig ist“, sagt Leps. Die Strahlung ist laut dem Experten jedoch belanglos. Auch für Menschen, die sich länger auf dem U-Bahnhof aufhalten, besteht keine Gefahr. In short: "According to experts the radiation is trivial." Source (from the toot thread): https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/bleibende-werte-1545553.html https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/bleibende-werte-1545553.h...
- al2o3cr 4y agoI agree: if somebody goes around licking the walls in subway stations, a few extra beta particles are the LEAST of their worries :P
- idiocrat 4y agoMany (or most) of the natural marble kitchen countertops are radioactive, especially the dark spots. Perhaps not hazardous, if epoxy glazed. If I were to build a house, I would walk all materials with a geiger counter, especially alpha particles. Sometimes difficult to replace material, if it is already worked into the structure.
- sixothree 4y agoHonestly, I'd be afraid to buy one knowing the way our government operates.
- LazyMans 4y agoThere is a guy on youtube called "Radioactive Drew". He has some interesting episodes exploring former/current uranium mines and other things related to radioactive substances. He has a video about a postoffice in Burbank California with similar radioactive tiles on the walls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuZzOVxreK4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuZzOVxreK4
- PaulHoule 4y agoI was at an antique store where they had numerous pieces of Uranium glass glowing under a UV light last weekend. I think it's funny that Uranium has this connotation of "glowing in the dark" which has nothing to do with the nuclear properties at all but rather very interesting optical phenomena that happen when you have an atom with a huge number of electrons like the way Thorium Oxide is good for gas lamps because it emits thermally in the visible range but not so much in the infrared.
- the8472 4y agoSome isotopes do glow in the dark if sufficiently enriched, due to their decay heat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plutonium_pellet.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plutonium_pellet.jpg
- PaulHoule 4y agoThat Pu238 pellet is surrounded by ash, I think they buried it in ash to hold the heat in and then uncovered it so you could see the glow. In this case it is driven by heat transport so the bigger of a mass you have the more the ratio of volume to area and the more it heats up. That's very different scaling from this kind of thing https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:36003591 https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:36003591
- snshn 4y agoA little bit of radiation is probably good for you.
- tilsammans 4y agoThis is great, nice find. I grew up with Uranium-based Fiestaware in the house, and I am looking at a radioactive red vase right now. My dad was a ceramics engineer and researcher. He wrote the book on red ceramic glazes (The Defiant Red), and there is a whole chapter on Uranium.
- wkat4242 4y agoNot great, not terrible.
- supernova87a 4y agoI wonder if this gives the tiles any kind of antiseptic (or even other) property to them, unintentionally.
- LarryMullins 4y agoU238-Bahn
- bookofjoe 4y agoUranium ore: https://www.amazon.com/Images-SI-Uranium-Ore/dp/B000796XXM https://www.amazon.com/Images-SI-Uranium-Ore/dp/B000796XXM