Briar Rose
Hi everyone,
I wrote to International Isotopes about those pesty Vaseline glass beads fo mine. I think some of you were right about getting rid of them. I wrote the company back after their reply about testing the beads for me, or getting rid of them properly. I am waiting to hear back from them. All I have been is sick since I got them. I love them, and the color is amazing, the properties of these are not, especially since I use jewelry for healing. Uranuim will kill me.
Anyway, here is the companies frist reply. I thought ya'll might like to read about it:
Uranium will emit alpha, low energy photons and low energy electrons as it decays. The alpha particle will not escape the glass bead. You may be able to detect a small amount of alpha from any uranium that is just as the surface of the bead, even still the alpha particle will not penetrate the skin or pass through clothing. Low Energy electron and photon dose on the surface shouldn’t be very high. This energy would be deposited in the skin adjacent that is in contact with the bead(s). If you have a G-M probe you could measure the dose or count rate. I do not know the concentration of uranium in the glass so I can’t give you an estimate of what this dose would be. I modeled the photon dose for a 0.25 cm radius bead of pure natural uranium. The photon dose 0.25 cm from the surface is 0.0063 mr/hr. If you multiply that by 10 (highly conservative) to account for the dose due to electron emission then you are at 0.063 mr/hr. To observe immediate affects of radiation on the skin the dose needs to be extremely high. The allowable occupation dose to the skin is 50 rems (or 50,000 mr) in one year. This dose is much lower than the dose that would result in detriment to the skin. If you use the dose rate from the model and wore the bead 24 hours a day then the dose to the skin beneath that bead would be about 550 mr in one year. The real hazard with uranium is the internal exposure associated with inhaling or ingesting uranium. So I wouldn’t call your uranium beads “un safe” and I wouldn’t expect any adverse medical effect from wearing the beads. But I wouldn’t crush them up and snort them.
I wrote to International Isotopes about those pesty Vaseline glass beads fo mine. I think some of you were right about getting rid of them. I wrote the company back after their reply about testing the beads for me, or getting rid of them properly. I am waiting to hear back from them. All I have been is sick since I got them. I love them, and the color is amazing, the properties of these are not, especially since I use jewelry for healing. Uranuim will kill me.
Anyway, here is the companies frist reply. I thought ya'll might like to read about it:
Uranium will emit alpha, low energy photons and low energy electrons as it decays. The alpha particle will not escape the glass bead. You may be able to detect a small amount of alpha from any uranium that is just as the surface of the bead, even still the alpha particle will not penetrate the skin or pass through clothing. Low Energy electron and photon dose on the surface shouldn’t be very high. This energy would be deposited in the skin adjacent that is in contact with the bead(s). If you have a G-M probe you could measure the dose or count rate. I do not know the concentration of uranium in the glass so I can’t give you an estimate of what this dose would be. I modeled the photon dose for a 0.25 cm radius bead of pure natural uranium. The photon dose 0.25 cm from the surface is 0.0063 mr/hr. If you multiply that by 10 (highly conservative) to account for the dose due to electron emission then you are at 0.063 mr/hr. To observe immediate affects of radiation on the skin the dose needs to be extremely high. The allowable occupation dose to the skin is 50 rems (or 50,000 mr) in one year. This dose is much lower than the dose that would result in detriment to the skin. If you use the dose rate from the model and wore the bead 24 hours a day then the dose to the skin beneath that bead would be about 550 mr in one year. The real hazard with uranium is the internal exposure associated with inhaling or ingesting uranium. So I wouldn’t call your uranium beads “un safe” and I wouldn’t expect any adverse medical effect from wearing the beads. But I wouldn’t crush them up and snort them.
