Word: radon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...treating certain types of cancer by radiation, doctors implant little gold "seeds" inside the growths. The seeds are actually hollow gold beads, each containing radon gas. After two or three weeks, the radon's radioactivity is virtually gone. The harmless seeds are left in place, but a few of them may be sloughed off by the body. At Manhattan's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, a nurse saved the seeds sloughed off by the tumor and had the salvaged gold made into a ring for her boy friend. He developed red patches on his finger. Memorial...
Nuclear Alchemy. A New Jersey engineering professor and his wife, after similar experiences, have had damaged skin removed and replaced with grafts. How had the rings become contaminated? Since radon has a half life of only 3.8 days (meaning that it loses half its radioactivity in that interval), the seeds should soon have become harmless. Trouble is, the radon turns, by nuclear alchemy, into lead-210, the radioactive isotope of that normally dull metal. The lead-210 adheres to the gold. Even so, the intact seeds are safe because the lead's rays, unlike the radon's, remain...
...Atomic Energy Commission has no control over medical radium. The states license a dozen makers of radon seeds, and keep a watch on their waste disposal. But the AEC's Dr. John Harley is concerned lest some contaminated gold may have found its way into dentures as well as jewelry...
What do you say, folks? Let's give the secretaries a break! Radon Nikodym, Teaching Fellow
Colorado's Governor Steve McNichols blamed the Federal Government for the radon menace. State attempts to improve working conditions in the mines, said McNichols, have been handicapped by the government's reluctance to furnish information on the dangers of radiation. He charged that the Atomic Energy Commission has forced the price of uranium so low that small mine operators cannot afford proper safeguards and ventilation for their miners...