14 ms·
Given the level of radioactivity, it's safe to say you should not eat an excessive number of these tiles.
by vinaypai 4y ago
Given 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...
- cafard 4y agoA family I knew in Montgomery County, Maryland, dumped the pepper out of its Fiestaware shaker and took it to a fire station's test-your-stuff day. My recollection is that the pepper was not hazardous.
- dgfitz 4y ago[flagged]
- cafard 4y agoI don't know why. Perhaps because I never heard of hazardous substance days at firehouses elsewhere. Perhaps because it sounds less as if I made up the story.
- renewiltord 4y ago[flagged]
- ender341341 4y agoNot necessarily a day, but I know that it's not uncommon for fire departments to do similar things for testing items for lead.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- baking 4y agoIs test-your-stuff day common where you are from? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_counties_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-income_countie...
- pastor_bob 4y agoVaseline Glass[0] is pretty common to find in antique stores if you want your own uraniumware [0]https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/consumer/glass/vaseline-uranium-glass.html https://www.orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/consum...
- superzamp 4y agochuckles glancing at my living room and seeing second-hand 70s orange antiques, glasses and dinnerware everywhere
- yanellena 4y agoA lot of glassware had uranium and other radioactive materials in too. Here's a good subreddit for it in the wild: https://www.reddit.com/r/uraniumglass/ https://www.reddit.com/r/uraniumglass/
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoWhat if I were to scrape those tiles and snort it?
- mc32 4y agoPeople will leave them alone, as long as they're not filled with jelly.
- chrisweekly 4y agohahahaha For those not in the know, JFK immortalized the pastry from Berlin in his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech. "Ich bin Berliner" -> I'm a citizen of Berlin "Ich bin ein Berliner" -> I'm a jelly donut.
- nkozyra 4y ago> There is a widespread misconception that Kennedy accidentally said a malapropism that he was a Berliner, a German doughnut specialty. This is an urban legend which emerged several decades after the speech, and it is not true that residents of Berlin in 1963 would have mainly understood the word "Berliner" to refer to a jelly doughnut or that the audience laughed at Kennedy's use of this expression.[2]
- Loic 4y agoEspecially because in Berlin they are known as "Krapfen" and not as Berliner.
- zorked 4y agoPfannkuchen in Berlin not Krapfen, I think?
- culturestate 4y agoThat's what someone who grew up in Berlin would probably say, but the city being what it is it genuinely depends on which shop you're standing in. I've seen it every which way.
- ff10 4y agoYes, Pfannkuchen is the name used in Berlin.
- Symmetry 4y agoI don't think I'd worry about that from a radiation standpoint. Natural uranium is only around 1000 times more radioactive than natural potassium, it's really not very bad in that sense and it wouldn't have survived from the birth of the solar system to the present day if it was. On the other hand, it is a toxic heavy metal so please, please don't eat it.
- papito 4y agoOh, that's right. Sometimes containers full of bananas will set off radiation alarms at shipping ports.
- LorenPechtel 4y agoAnd you'll get a lot more of that potassium into your body than uranium. So long as you don't eat such low-level things they're not a threat. (And, personally, I'm not convinced there's any threat. All of our estimates of the threat of radioactivity are based on high level exposures. IIRC it's about 100 Sieverts = 1 death. We project that linearly into the lose dose realms that are effectively impossible to test, but we have some data points that suggest the linear projection is not accurate and low level exposure is of much lower or possibly even negative threat--that the body's reaction to the low level radioactivity actually is protective. There is no relationship between cancer and background radioactivity. The threat of radon noted in uranium miners only shows up if they're also smokers--huh??)
- chmod775 4y ago> And you'll get a lot more of that potassium into your body than uranium. And your body needs potassium. In fact most humans don't get enough.
- odiroot 4y agoThat station is quite filthy, the glazing is the least of your problems.