Word: radon
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What do you say, folks? Let's give the secretaries a break! Radon Nikodym, Teaching Fellow
...cause seemed clear: radon, a dense gas that emanates from uranium, is highly radioactive and breaks down into products that are radioactive too. If there are more than 300 micromicrocuries of radioactive material per liter of air in a mine, the mine is officially rated unsafe. Investigators found air in 50% of the uranium mines in Colorado and Arizona contaminated by four to five times the safe level of radiation. In one mine, they counted 47,000 micromicrocuries per liter...
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...
...fourth case. He would have taken more, but fortunately for him-and others-the Radithor outfit went out of business. Recently, responding to M.I.T.'s invitation, he presented himself for a checkup. Dr. Robley Dunglison Evans, 51, had him breathe into a glass flask, to test for radon gas in his breath, and into a mask hooked up to another flask to test for another gas, thoron, that has a half life of only 54 seconds. An ultra-sensitive scintillation counter scanned his whole body for gamma rays. X rays searched his bones for radioactive deposits. There, though...
...radiation gets into the air and might conceivably build up to health-hazard proportions, it does not come from the reactor. The heavy villains are the radium-painted luminous dials and markers used to permit operating in the dark. In a completely closed ventilating system with recycled air, the radon gas emitted by such markers becomes so concentrated that it could hinder detection of an actual reactor leak. After the markers were replaced by a nonradioactive type, an appreciable radon concentration remained. It was found to come from the dials of crewmen's luminous wristwatches, but was fortunately...