Radioactive Toilet Tissue Containers: The New Hazzard?

hisz.rsoe.hu...

HAZMAT in USA on Friday, 13 January, 2012 at 04:14 (04:14 AM) UTC

Description

The level of radiation exposure from holding the tissue box against the body for one hour would be equivalent to a chest X-ray, said state health officials. Health officials said they've removed a dozen metal box tissue holders containing small amounts of radioactive material from four Bed, Bath and Beyond stores in New York. None of the boxes were sold to the public, said the company. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission notified state health officials Tuesday that a shipment of metal box tissue holders to four Bed, Bath and Beyond stores were found to contain low levels of Cobalt-60. Cobalt-60, a man-made product using cobalt, has been used to sterilize medical equipment and in radiation therapy for cancer patients. The level of radiation exposure from holding the tissue box against the body for one hour would be equivalent to a chest X-ray, said state health officials. The NRC said scrap metal containing Cobalt-60 could have inadvertently been incorporated into the product during smelting. The products arrived in a shipment from India on Dec. 27, and 220 were distributed to Bed Bath and Beyond stores nationwide. Locally, 12 were distributed to a store in Nassau County, a store in Suffolk County, and two stores in Westchester County. Company representatives emphasized none were sold to the public and that no other stores in New York received shipments of the items. "The presence or handling of these boxes poses no imminent public health threat," said Nassau County Health Commissioner Lawrence Einstein, M.D.

This is a really bizzare thing, I mean who would suspect toilet tissue containers were radioactive in the first
place?

(If this is not posted well, I apologize I tried to use "ex text" but I guess I was doing it wrong, anyway it didn't work.).

Not really a big deal, you phone put's off more radiation and it's next to your head or your reproductive system all day. Not to mention the radiation from your computer monitor your staring at while writing this thread.

reply to post by Iamschist


Thats scarry. The thing I'm curious about is how did they even know to test these boxes for radiation? Though, I'm surprised they're from India, lately it seems stuff like this comes from china.

reply to post by mileslong54


I agree that it is not like using Chernobyl to, well you know, however considering all that we are exposed to and the cumulative effect, do you really want your TP to be radioactive?

Originally posted by mileslong54
Not really a big deal, you phone put's off more radiation and it's next to your head or your reproductive system all day. Not to mention the radiation from your computer monitor your staring at while writing this thread.

Fallacious comparison.

Phones emit non-ionizing radiation, which is far less dangerous to organic cellular material.

Ionizing radiation, such as that discussed in this article, is a totally different issue and more dangerous in many respects.

It seems nothing is safe anymore.

Now this?

Buyer beware has a whole new meaning.

Both are forms of electromagnetic radiation.

However in the wiki on radio it reveals this tidbit:

Radio frequencies occupy the range from a few tens of hertz to three hundred gigahertz, although commercially important uses of radio use only a small part of this spectrum.[3] Other types of electromagnetic radiation, with frequencies above the RF range, are microwave, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays and gamma rays. Since the energy of an individual photon of radio frequency is too low to remove an electron from an atom, radio waves are classified as non-ionizing radiation.

Ionization is dangerous to organic cellular material because when an individual atom is ionized, it acquires new chemical properties. These new properties can cause an individual atom to no longer hold a chemical bond within the larger molecule it is situated within, thus causing the molecule to fall apart.

Ionizing radiation

reply to post by muzzleflash

And yet microwaves are "not good" for the body. Or am I reading it wrong?
ETA No, I'm not wrong...

Some, but not all, studies suggest that long-term exposure may have a carcinogenic effect

Source

reply to post by Iamschist


Oh poop. Just when people were getting the importance of the R's - reduce, reuse and recycle.

OOps.

(Good find. S&F& :up

Something else to consider, what about the workers in India who manufactured these? Wouldn't they have been exposed to quite a bit of radiation given what the alert says about the time of exposure? Where would that raw material have come from? I hope our Gov is talking to the Gov of India so it can take steps to protect their populaion.

Originally posted by LightSpeedDriver
reply to post by muzzleflash

 

And yet microwaves are "not good" for the body. Or am I reading it wrong?
ETA No, I'm not wrong...

Some, but not all, studies suggest that long-term exposure may have a carcinogenic effect

Source

edit on 13/1/12 by LightSpeedDriver because: ETA

Look at this chart:
EM spectrum

Look at where X and Gamma rays are, then note where visible light is, and then notice where micro and radio waves are at.

However, keep in mind that it also states that :

In general, particles or photons with energies above about 10 electron volts (eV) are considered ionizing, no matter what their intensity.

More information to consider:
mobile phone radiation
Conversion tables
Battery faqs

The radio waves emitted by a GSM handset can have a peak power of 2 watts, and a US analogue phone had a maximum transmit power of 3.6 watts.

Converting Watts to Volts The conversion of Watts to Volts at fixed amperage is governed by the equation Volts = Watts/Amps For example 100 watts/10 amps = 10 volts

For example a 2000 mAh battery will sustain a 2000 milli-Amp (2 ampere) draw for approximately one hour before dropping to a voltage level that is considered discharged. A 1700 mAh battery will sustain a 1700 milli-Amp (1.7 ampere) draw for approximately one hour.

Also check this out:
volt vs evolt discussion
Cell phone eV

FM radio ≈90 Mhz so 3 meters - 0.0000004 electron volts per photon
WiFi ≈2.4Ghz so 125 mm - 0.00001 electron volts per photon
Cell Phone ≈5.6 Ghz so 54 mm - 0.0000232 electron volts per photon
Red Light 450 Thz so 700 nm - 1.77 electron volts per photon

It claims that over 10 eV = ionizing, but here it claims that Cell's only rate at .0000232 eV

Now for why it's danger issue so vastly different:
Thermal Radiation from Cell phones:

One well-understood effect of microwave radiation is dielectric heating, in which any dielectric material (such as living tissue) is heated by rotations of polar molecules induced by the electromagnetic field. In the case of a person using a cell phone, most of the heating effect will occur at the surface of the head, causing its temperature to increase by a fraction of a degree.

So instead of ionizing your brain, you are just cooking it with heat.

At least that's my understanding of what's going on with cell phone use and it's danger.

They said the metal came from India witch is in the japan region. The radiation has been reported to go as far as California. I just saw a article about some type of metal product being sold out of Korea has been contaminated with radiation. For those that do not know you need to keep your eyes on Japan, the reactor has been spewing radiation into our air for months. Its only a matter of time till people start dropping.

reply to post by muzzleflash


Also carcinogenic effects are not all related to ionizing radiation. Many people believe it is related to the thermal radiation energy (heat) aspect of the battery pack rather than radio/microwaves from the antenna (since they are so weak in power).

For example the air everywhere around you is filled with many radio/microwave signals and you are surrounded by people talking on phones and by phone relay towers. This also reveals that the thermal (heat) aspect of putting a hot electronic device on your head physically is most likely the source of the brain tumors.

Also remember when I first posted the disagreement the post only said "phones" it didn't specifically say cell phones although I assumed that was the insinuation. By the way I don't use a cell phone I use land lines 95% of the time because I don't like to warm my head up with an electronic device.

I am just saying that the danger posed by radioactive waste materials (as per the OP article) are far greater than the separate and different forms of danger posed by cell phone usage.