19 ms·
Why is my dryer radioactive?
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- r3trohack3r 3y agoWe had this issue in the Midwest (central Illinois). Can’t remember exactly why, but radon would accumulate in the basements. Had to have sensors and ventilation for it.
- bhhaskin 3y agoSame issue in Northern Nevada. Radon gas seeps in.
- anamexis 3y agoIndeed - radon checks are a standard part of pre-purchase home inspections, because remediation can be quite expensive
- Kon-Peki 3y agoMost of the cost is the installation of equipment in the existing home. In areas of the country that have a lot of radon, it's not uncommon to install the equipment during construction of the house foundation, which then only adds a few hundred dollars to the total cost. > Radon-resistant new construction (RRNC) typically costs a builder between $250 and $750. RRNC could cost less than $250 if the builder already uses some of the same techniques for moisture control. https://www.epa.gov/radon/radon-resistant-new-construction-home-buyers https://www.epa.gov/radon/radon-resistant-new-construction-h...
- hinkley 3y agoNot uncommon as in it's building code in those areas. Tricky bit I think is when you live in a state with small pockets of radon instead of broad regions. Then you're back into crapshoot territory.
- danbtl 3y agoWe had such a remediation done recently, in Alberta close to the rocky mountains. Costs were around $2,000 CAD to install a sub-slab depressurization system (i.e. a fan that pulls air from below the house and vents it away from the house). Radon values dropped from around 500 Bq/m3 to less than 20 Bq/m3.
- hinkley 3y agoThose systems must be new. The classic solution is to install drain pipes before pouring the slab, so one can imagine how difficult it would be using 1980's construction techniques to retroactively add piping below a finished house. We also had to dig trenches to lay natural gas lines, but we have a way to do those with horizontal boring techniques (of course then people who didn't know what they were doing put them straight through sewer lines, causing backups, visits from the Roto Rooter man, and subsequent explosions due to dumping natural gas straight into the sewer main). Is it safe to assume they're using something like that with perforated pipes to exhaust radon?
- ilyt 3y ago>Those systems must be new. The classic solution is to install drain pipes before pouring the slab, so one can imagine how difficult it would be using 1980's construction techniques to retroactively add piping below a finished house. They didn't had diggers and drills in the 80's ?
- iudqnolq 3y agoIt's easy to make a hole. Making a hole underground without making a hole aboveground is harder.
- hinkley 3y agoFor instance, the first subway systems in London were installed via cut and cover. Dig a trench, build a roof. Usually those trenches were in the street, or a former canal, not under a building. Using modern tunnel boring equipment, Seattle's attempt to move the downtown section of 99 into a tunnel ended up stalled for a year because the ground shifted and pinched the boring machine in place. Oopsie. And of course if you're worried about gasses, puncturing a solid piece of concrete is just going to make that problem worse.
- theGnuMe 3y agoHappens almost everywhere where basements exist.
- lazide 3y agoHigher amounts of granite in the soil make it worse. Depending on the area, it can be a severe health hazard to the point no one puts in basements - others, kinda meh. Here is a map! [https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-12/documents/radon-zones-map.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-12/documents/ra...]
- gniv 3y agoI would think you want basements (and ventilate them), since otherwise the radon comes directly into the living space.
- dmicah 3y agoIt can be an issue everywhere, Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer, after smoking.
- schiffern 3y agoThis claim (which ultimately came from the EPA) is suspect at best. It just comes from assuming a Linear No-Threshold model, which flatly contradicts the available body of medical evidence. https://youtu.be/TYZglUjLE0Y https://youtu.be/TYZglUjLE0Y
- joshuahedlund 3y agoThanks for posting this, I will check it out. As a Midwesterner with a basement I had once looked into those claims about radon as the second-highest cause of lung cancer with concern and found the evidence much weaker than I expected. Even by EPA estimates[0] almost 90% of the lung cancer deaths attributed to radon are smokers (i.e. who have already weakened lungs), and there didn't seem to be good evidence of damage from basement radon for non-smokers. [0]https://www.epa.gov/radon/health-risk-radon https://www.epa.gov/radon/health-risk-radon
- schiffern 3y agoLet me preemptively disclaim that I do have nitpicks about the talk I linked, but IMO his main argument is sound. In particular I think his scientific explanations aren't always fully accurate, and he worries about measurement minutia very strenuously. Also at one point he says you could breathe 80% radon/20% oxygen, which while chemically this is true, radiologically it would be suicidal. Those nitpicks aside, his point about the EPA LNT model having no clothes is spot on. After "the scales fell from my eyes," now I can't not notice how all those same Party Line Claims get parroted in every piece of radon-related content. Another glimpse down the rabbit hole is this interview with the late Dr Bernie Cohen, who studied the link between residential radon and cancer: https://youtu.be/xhkBLhw-8pk https://youtu.be/xhkBLhw-8pk
- 3y ago
- inglor_cz 3y agoSome places in Czechia have a huge problem with radon emanating from the ancient bedrock below. These places, even though rural and not polluted, tend to have more deaths from lung cancer than the rust belt in northern Moravia, where air quality in general is worse, but the radon problem is almost non-existent. Newly built houses are required to be radon-proofed, AFAIK.
- Radim 3y agoI remember that "radon killer" story being vastly overblown / debunked. Apparently anything up to 150Bq/m3 is fine or even beneficial for your health. [0] Has the debunking itself been debunked? It's hard to keep track. [0] https://www.osel.cz/3436-radon-neskodi-a-mozna-i-prospiva.html https://www.osel.cz/3436-radon-neskodi-a-mozna-i-prospiva.ht...
- xenadu02 3y agoBecause the rock formations in some areas are more prone to production of Radon gas which slowly diffuses through the soil. Basements in those areas tend to have Radon infiltration. It is obviously very slow but the basement is a low point and often not well ventilated which can allow the Radon to accumulate. Poured slabs are less permeable, not a low point, and tend to have better ventilation either intentionally or unintentionally.
- logdap 3y agoTechnically it's the daughters of radon, the decay products, which accumulate. Radon itself has a half life of less than four days, but it decays into all kinds of nasty stuff like Polonium and ultimately Lead.
- BetterGeiger 3y agoIt is a myth that radon collects in "low points", concentrations are low and it diffuses as the molecules bounce around. However, as you said radon is entering into those areas primarily, which means it will naturally be higher in those areas. Secondly basements often have poor ventilation, which is not to say that the radon cannot otherwise escape, but ventilation can disperse it much more rapidly than diffusion.
- afterburner 3y ago> I was once prevented from leaving a neutron-science facility at Los Alamos after the seat of my pants set off a radiation alarm on exit. This was odd because the neutron beam had been off for weeks. It was a Saturday, so the radiation safety technician on call didn't arrive for half an hour — at which point I was clean, so the detective questions began. I had spent the day sitting on a plastic step stool. The tech looked at it, said that radon's decay products are concentrated by static electricity, and told me that I needed to get a real chair. Hilarious
- tpmx 3y agoAlso: That competence (the radiation safety technician).
- dylan604 3y agoI would hope that at some place like Los Alamos the technicians are a little more qualified than your run of the mill techs.
- tpmx 3y agoI suppose the downside of all that secrecy is balanced with the upside of having lots of competent and smart colleagues. In my experience that is worth even more than a very high salary for your quality of life. (That 1958 article morkalork dug up and presented below, seems historically interesting at least. Thanks for making an effort to show it.)
- morkalork 3y agoYou might lose your mind a bit if you're surrounded by them 247 though. >Although the town is trim and neat, With cozy houses on every street, Though saying so is indiscreet, >I hate it. From: https://web.archive.org/web/20201126185123/https://archive.macleans.ca/article/1958/9/13/deep-river-almost-the-perfect-place-to-live https://web.archive.org/web/20201126185123/https://archive.m...
- 3y ago
- dotBen 3y agoRelated: HNer recommendations for home geiger counters? (serious request - for general fun/experimentation/curiosity satiation)
- jboy55 3y agoI have a GMC-320S, its ok, I had to cut away some of the plastic so it could read a uranium source I bought. The plastic housing would shield the tube from most of the radiation of the source. There are little slits that would let some in, I just widened them with a dremel. I wouldn't recommend it again, but if you received one as a gift, with a bit of tweaking, you'll be measuring random stuff in your house.
- schiffern 3y agoI've seen Cody (of CodysLab fame/infamy) use a GMC-320 Plus,[0] which runs about $130. You can get the GMC-300E a bit cheaper, but with no temperature compensation sensor[1] it won't be quite as accurate. [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/codyslab/comments/hk3jru/more_fun_with_new_geiger_counter_moar_radium/ https://old.reddit.com/r/codyslab/comments/hk3jru/more_fun_w... [1] https://www.gqelectronicsllc.com/support/GMC_Selection_Guide.htm https://www.gqelectronicsllc.com/support/GMC_Selection_Guide...
- rolobio 3y agoI have a GQ 600-RPS and I love it. It detects alpha, beta and gamma. Detection range is only a few inches, so you have to know what to look for. We take it on family outings and search for uranium rocks.
- blackfawn 3y agoI really like my https://www.bettergeiger.com/ https://www.bettergeiger.com/ (no affiliation with them, I just own one and am happy with it) It uses a solid-state scintillator instead of the older and less sensitive Geiger-Müller tube.
- BetterGeiger 3y agoThanks :D
- cwmma 3y agoReminds me of the story about how Radon was discovered (well the fact that it can accumulate in homes). The story goes that a worker at a nuclear power plant kept on setting off the detectors when coming in to work and eventually they investigated his house.
- robmiller 3y agoThe nuclear power plant had built the homes to house workers in the early 1980s and to an early form of Energy Star compliance, with an emphasis on being air-tight. Radon was trapped in these homes, workers set off the alarms, and the radon mitigation industry was born.
- kzrdude 3y agoI haven't read much on physics before. My favourite thing to do on these stack overflow sites (or on specific tags) is to go to Questions -> sort by score, and just read through the top questions and answers. It's a bit hidden away because they want to steer people to the active questions, not to established ones.
- voynich 3y agoI always find this a more entertaining way to learn about these topics, because they're questions which we might have had before, but never thought much about.
- dylan604 3y agoYeah, these kinds of things are what the internet should be all about rather than whatever the hell it morphed into. Sure, I'm applying my morals and expectations to it, but I don't think I've ventured onto a thin limb here.
- kzrdude 3y agoI'll just make a note of a few good ones.. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/121830/does-earth-really-have-two-high-tide-bulges-on-opposite-sides https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/121830/does-eart... There is no tidal bulge
- Jun8 3y agoThe tidal bulge one is one my all time favorites, you should absolutely read the answer. tl;dr the simplistic view of two tidal bulges (that started with Newton) is wrong! This is one of those physics simplifications that still gets pushed around. For another example, see speed of light in glass is slower than vacuum.
- red75prime 3y ago> For another example, see speed of light in glass is slower than vacuum. For all practical purposes it's true. You'll get higher delays in fiber optics than in, say, radio-relay links. The details of matter-photon interaction are interesting, of course.
- ck2 3y agoFlorida is about to build some test roads using phosphogypsum, a radioactive waste product of the fertilizer industry that has been piling up and they want to unload. It contains high quantities of radium which decays into radon, this should end well. > "Phosphogypsum contains appreciable quantities of uranium and its decay products, such as radium-226," according to the EPA. And because the fertilizer production process concentrates waste material, "phosphogypsum is more radioactive than the original phosphate rock," the agency notes. > "The radium is of particular concern because it decays to form radon, a cancer-causing, radioactive gas," the EPA adds. https://www.npr.org/2023/05/09/1174789570/florida-roads-radioactive-paving-phosphogypsum https://www.npr.org/2023/05/09/1174789570/florida-roads-radi...
- skybrian 3y agoIt’s outside though, so the radon wouldn’t normally accumulate unless something weird happens. Seems like this is the sort of thing you’d want experts to look at.
- bobthepanda 3y agoIt is a road, though, and we know all sorts of things already accumulate via stormwater runoff.
- myself248 3y agoAre you suggestin' that gases accumulate in runoff? That's the thing about the uranium decay series. Just after radium, it has this gaseous stage called radon, which doesn't matter one whit when it's sealed into a rock; an atom of radon in the middle of a piece of granite just sits there for a few days and then goes right on into being lead. But if it's near the surface of a grain of sand or something, that radium turns into radon and the radon escapes into the surrounding air. And it goes wherever the air goes for the next day or two, before turning into lead. So if that radon is in the runoff, it just fizzes out like any other dissolved gas, and blows around in the air along with all the other gases that make up the air, exactly like any other radon that had an escape route when it was created. There's radon in the air everywhere, right now, a brief stop on the decay chain that is otherwise all solids. And those atoms of radon are undergoing alpha decay all the time, turning into atoms of lead, minuscule bits of dust popping into existence, everywhere.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Bendy 3y agoQuestion fabulously answered by rob whose Stack Exchange avatar is also a banger.
- taubek 3y agoI saw this nice visualization of radon decay time at https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/13fw2uh/oc_radioactive_decay_of_radon_progeny_in_dryer/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/13fw2uh/oc...
- BetterGeiger 3y agoI think the core of the explanation given is correct but some of the adjacent details need adjustment. The important part is: "Clothes dryers are very effective at making statically charged surfaces. (Dryer sheets help.) So when radon and its temporary decay products are blown through the dryer, electrically-polarized molecules tend to be attracted to the charged surfaces" What that commenter misses is that nearly all hobbyist grade detectors (Geiger tubes) are not sensitive to alpha but they are highly sensitive to beta and a little sensitivity to gamma. However, any thin solid will block beta, so they would need the Geiger tube to be very near the radiation emitting material to pick up the beta. In other words, if they're just waving the detector around they're probably just catching the gamma. The radon in the air decays into various progeny, and by the time it reaches the dryer that will be to some extent in equilibrium, so several isotopes, including gamma emitters, will be present in the mix. Therefore I'm not surprised the detector reads a tiny bit of that. Why it dissipates is probably not a decay thing but rather the accumulated material gradually diffusing away from the filter or whatever after the dryer is turned off and no longer actively accumulating radon. This could be tested by putting a detector right next to the filter to see how much beta it picks up. I've basically done that with a home air filter: https://twitter.com/BetterGeiger/status/1605639346865901570?s=20 https://twitter.com/BetterGeiger/status/1605639346865901570?... That's with the detector I make and sell which is primarily sensitive to gamma, which is why I could register a reading through the plastic container, even a couple days after preparing the test. When I used a pancake style detector sensitive to alpha and beta, directly against the exposed filter, the detector reacted much more strongly... But the Better Geiger S-1 gives an accurate dose reading, the Geiger tube or pancake probe will dramatically overestimate dose in that scenario, which can cause undue concern... In reality it's pretty harmless levels of radiation. :)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kloch 3y ago> but they are highly sensitive to beta I’m not familiar with Geiger counter design/specs but would the considerable static electricity send some electrons into the detector and cause a false positive beta hit?
- lsllc 3y agoClearly it's residual radiation from the collapse of the wormhole to the sock dimension. /s
- crazygringo 3y agoWe can confirm this hypothesis if there's also radiation in between the couch cushions from the wormhole to the dimension of lost pocket change...
- nakedneuron 3y agoBrilliant.
- jeffrallen 3y agoThat guy got out by the seat of his pants!
- perihelions 3y agoI doubt it has anything to do with molecular dipoles. More likely I'd guess ionized radionuclides adsorb onto macroscopic dust particles (or some similar mechanism), which then maintain a net charge imbalance.
- jpmattia 3y agoYeah, the wording in the explanation was particular suspect: > Polarized or polarizable objects are attracted to strong electric fields Polarizable objects align in an E field, they aren't attracted to the E field. I don't doubt you could contrive a field to move a polarized object, but the wording seems to be confusing an ionized object with a polarized object.
- _Microft 3y agoPolarized objects in inhomogeneous electric fields experience a net force. This effect is called dielectrophoresis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectrophoresis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectrophoresis
- t0bia_s 3y agoThe true story part is hilarious!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throwawaymaths 3y agoBeta decay energies can be as low as 10ish KeV and static discharge can be in the 10 KV range, is it possible there's just crosstalk?
- vrglvrglvrgl 3y ago[dead]
- tjmc 3y agoInteresting that the second answer mentions the enhanced radioactivity of laundry detergeant. One of our smoke detectors briefly went off the other day as I walked under it with a basket of wet clothes straight out of the washing machine. Any chance that's what it was?
- fastneutron 3y agoThis is similar to a fun trick I used to show people back when CRTs were the predominant television screen. The face of the TV would build up a static charge and collect dust over time. I’d wipe the screen off with a damp paper towel and place it under a alpha/beta/gamma-sensitive Geiger probe. It would hit 500 counts per minute easily(background was about 250). I knew people who took this to an extreme by putting a high-voltage static charge on a needle, then placing the charged needle in a closed bell jar with a pile of thorium-doped lantern mantles. The tip of the needle would pick up enough radon daughters that it made a great rechargeable point source for cloud chamber demonstrations.