Radioactive Heirlooms!
This post was published 2 years 2 months 9 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.Ever inherit something from a family member or have your parents or other family member give you a preset from generations of yesteryear? Well you should be careful, especially if those pieces are glass.
Unbeknownst to many people, many glass pieces produced at the turn of the century to mid century actually use uranium as a colorant, similar to adding iron to glass to give it a greenish hue. The practice began in the 1840’s long before radioactivity was known of and even longer before radioactivity was known to be harmful.
Hit the Jump for photos and more:
Under normal lighting:
Under UV lighting:
Buckley et al (1980) estimated that there were at least 4,160,000 pieces of decorative uranium glass produced in the US between 1958 and 1978 and 15,000 drinking glasses from 1968 to 1972.
The uranium content of Vaseline glass is often on the order of 2 % by weight. Nevertheless, the uranium content of some glass manufactured in the early 1900s, reached as high as 25 %.
Most pieces made after 1959 were made with depleted uranium (DU), and therefore contain a significantly less radioactive form of the metal (although the jury is still out on how bad DU is in close proximity to humans).
Hit the link for radiation exposure rates!!
I remember my science teacher doing some experiment in class with some old pottery or glassware. He had a meter that was meant to measure radiation (geiger counter?), and he dropped it inside this pot and it started going nuts. Now Im wondering if Im remembering this incorrectly, because it seems like a bad idea to bring a radioactive vase into a classroom.
A physics teacher of mine had a bowl that he knew released a tiny amount of radiation. Every week or so, he’d place some metal objects on top of a sheet of (specially treated?) dark paper, and set the bowl on top of it. By the end of the week, he’d have a “photo” of silhouettes of the items. Neat stuff, if not a little scary.