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Re: Yellowing of radioactive lens elements....Re: [OM] 55/1.2

Subject: Re: Yellowing of radioactive lens elements....Re: [OM] 55/1.2
From: whunter <whunterjr@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 10 Aug 2003 20:17:56 -0400
Swore I was going to quit this discourse of misappropriated facts, but you 'Got me!!!'......
On Sunday, August 10, 2003, at 07:54  PM, John Hudson wrote:

To enjoy and be informed of the answer, suggest you visit the library
for a book about the radium dial painters of the early 1900s.  Because
of this tragedy, the use of radium in virtually all consumer products
from watches to 'snake oil' potions was prohibited by the 1950s.

Insofar as no answer was given I suspect that the radioactive toxicity of
camera lenses is no more perilous than a luminous watch
Exactly +++, since radium decay does generate some gamma radiation and your exposure is a lot closer and constant compared to a lens, I would probably not wear a radium dial wrist watch today - - at least not full time. I do question whether your 'luminescent dial' is from radium or other zero risk approach. The age suggests the latter.
and as such amounts
to a a storm in a tea cup. Certainly the issue raises no concern with me.

One interesting memory of my early childhood in the UK was going with my mother to have shoes fitted. One stood with your feet inside the front of a three or four high foot four sided pyramid with a viewing lens at the top. Viewed through the lens one had a wonderful xray view of the foot and ankle
bones and could pick and choose just which pair of shoes to buy.

......or if a kid just watch your toes wiggle!!!!! HOW WELL I remember these. Thank god they were outlawed!!!! Radiation exposure was horrific.
 I had a lot
of fun with these things and am still around after close on 50 years. I have not seen these fitting devices since the late 1950s and suspect that some
bureaucrat deemed them unsafe!

... and they REALLY were unsafe!!!!
Thanks for the smile.
Bill Hunter

jh


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