[HN Gopher] U-Bahn station in Berlin is decorated with radioacti...
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U-Bahn station in Berlin is decorated with radioactive uranium
glazed tiles
Author : dewey
Score : 298 points
Date : 2023-02-07 11:45 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (chaos.social)
(TXT) w3m dump (chaos.social)
| dTal wrote:
| "No loitering"
| [deleted]
| Koshkin wrote:
| U-238 must be pretty safe, given its long half-life?
| russianGuy83829 wrote:
| Didn't know they had so many Ubahn lines in Berlin, though it
| went from U1 to U9 ;)
| mpetrovich wrote:
| No, he's talking about the movie. You know, the one with the
| sub.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Because I felt like it:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-239
| LazyMans wrote:
| There is a guy on youtube called "Radioactive Drew". He has some
| interesting episodes exploring former/current uranium mines and
| other things related to radioactive substances. He has a video
| about a postoffice in Burbank California with similar radioactive
| tiles on the walls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuZzOVxreK4
| scrlk wrote:
| For those wondering, the units on the dosimeter might be
| milliroentgen/h. One of the replies mentions that it's a RKS
| 20.03 "Pripyat" dosimeter.
|
| 11.37 mR/h? Not great, not terrible.
| H8crilA wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken that's 0.1137 milisievert / hour. Meaning
| you have to stand glued to the tiles for about 4 years to get
| the LD50 lethal dose of about 4000 Sievert. Also, the lethality
| of the dose only really applies when the exposure is short.
|
| Or, alternatively, the average yearly background radiation of
| about 2 milisievert takes about 18 hours of being glued to
| those tiles.
| neffo wrote:
| An idea for Berlin police looking to move on those pesky
| loitering youths in the station, charge them with triggering
| an INES incident. (Giving themselves a dose of radiation
| exceeding annual limits by leaning against the wall.)
| Nitrolo wrote:
| EDIT: Someone linked to the Wikipedia article for uranium
| tiles, which says that the majority of the radiation comes
| from the decay products and is beta radiation[1]. Beta
| radiation has a weighing factor of 1, which makes your
| calculation pretty much correct!
|
| ==========
|
| EDIT 2: Looking more closely it appears that the dosimeter in
| the video is switched to uSv/h, so it's reading 0.1 mSv/h
| anyway and the whole discussion below can be skipped if
| you're not interested in the difference between Gy and Sv.
|
| ==========
|
| If I remember my lectures correctly (Wikipedia did help me
| here), the conversion is 1 Roentgen ~ 00.1 Gray (Gy), which
| is a slightly different unit from Sievert (Sv).
|
| 1 Gy is 1 J/kg of absorbed energy, however the biological
| effects change depending on the type of radiation. Sv is Gy
| adjusted by a weighing factor. It's 1 for gamma rays, where 1
| Gy = 1 Sv, but for alpha particles it's 20 [0].
|
| Uranium-238 emits alpha particles, which get stopped by a few
| cm of air or even dead skin. So the effective dose you are
| receiving from the decay of U-238 is probably closer to 0
| mSv/h.
|
| Or, if you eat it and it's inside you, 2 mSv/h, at which
| point you should probably be quite worried.
|
| The decay products of U-238 however are beta emitters, which
| changes the calculation again. The beta particles can
| penetrate the skin, but the weighing factor for beta
| radiation is 1, so it can reach you but is also less
| dangerous. So what's the actual final value? I honestly don't
| know, radiation can be complicated, and I just wanted to
| share the difference between Gy and Sv!
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_tile
| bioemerl wrote:
| The real danger is the tiles, it's that throws something
| hard, shatters one of the tiles, releases dust, and someone
| breathes the dust in.
|
| I'm actually astounded this is allowed to be there in a
| public place, because at home you can reasonably expect
| protect against someone shattering a tile, but in public? One
| drunk guy is all you need.
| tomxor wrote:
| That's most likely the reason they are still there, because
| of how much more hazardous it would be to attempt to remove
| them.
|
| Then again there are well practiced methods for removing
| sources of similarly hazardous air-bourn particulates such
| as asbestos, i'm not sure how much difference there is
| between the two beyond the low risk of pure exposure
| (inhalation being the serious risk here).
| sofixa wrote:
| > Then again there are well practiced methods for
| removing sources of similarly hazardous air-bourn
| particulates such as asbestos, i'm not sure how much
| difference there is between the two beyond the low risk
| of pure exposure (inhalation being the serious risk
| here).
|
| There's also the difference that this is a U-Bahn station
| in use, in the rough middle of a line. Closing it down
| for a prolonged period of time, _and_ fully sealing it
| from the rest of the line to avoid the spread of dust
| through the metro tunnels would be a significant and
| disruptive undertaking.
| tomxor wrote:
| Good point. Even attempting to seal it off from the
| tunnel seems futile considering how much disturbance to
| air pressure a passing train will cause.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I imagine some drilling would create quite a nasty cloud.
| Of course this would require being oblivious of composition
| by magistrate and allowing it, which I don't think is the
| case here. Still, at least put on it some hard transparent
| protective paint, I am sure there are things for that.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Even if it happens from time to time, the amount of dusk is
| going to be ridiculously small (you don't release that much
| _dust_ from damaging a rock, let alone glazing, unless you
| grind it).
|
| And keep in mind that this is a subway station, places
| where the pm2.5 levels are routinely extremely high because
| of the dust released by train breaks, so a microscopic
| amount of uranium dust is really negligible in such an
| environment.
| xattt wrote:
| The LD50 would apply to effects of acute radiation sickness.
| However, given the long duration exposure, it would increase
| your relative risk of stochastic effects, like cancer.
| kris_wayton wrote:
| > 0.1137 milisievert / hour
|
| I saw 11.37 on the display, wouldn't that be 0.01137 ?
| tomxor wrote:
| They are using different and not directly convertible
| units.
|
| Roentgen (R) used by the instrument only measures exposure,
| but this is not the same as absorption which depends on the
| type of radiation, the type of biological tissue exposed,
| the duration of exposure etc. The parent is using Sv which
| measures absorption for the purpose of more usefully
| assessing biological risk. I'm not sure how the parent is
| converting them, there are probably some good rules of
| thumb.
| kris_wayton wrote:
| Here's a screenshot of the highest reading I saw (11.37)
| and an english overlay of possible units it can display.
| It's hard to see the button positions.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/gl8NLqB
| Jeema101 wrote:
| They're switches, and it looks like it's set to mSv/h
| based on your English overlay. So 11.37 mSv/h, or .01137
| Sv/h - about 4 1/2 times the level of the typical
| background radiation.
| mrb wrote:
| Background radiation is less than 3.5 mSv/year, or less
| than 0.0004 mSv/hour. So if these tiles radiate 11.37
| mSv/hour that would be 28 000 times more than background
| radiation !
| tomxor wrote:
| Hmm, 3 mSv is supposed to be the average annual
| _background_ radiation absorption for humans [0], that 's
| roughly 0.000342 mSv/h. Which would make 11.37 mSv/h
| 33245 times greater.
|
| At the other end of the scale the minimum annual dose
| with a clear link to increased risk of cancer is
| supposedly 100 mSv [1]. But the risk is different
| depending on the distribution over time, so if we make it
| hourly for comparison that is 0.0114 mSv/h making this
| reading about 1000 times higher than that risk threshold
| (but the risk is over a year is effectively assuming
| continuous exposure).
|
| Seconds or minutes isn't going to be terrible, but in
| only 9 hours leaning against it you would get a years
| worth of high risk cancer dose!... I'd stay away from the
| wall. happy to be corrected, this stuff is hard to
| interpret if you are not an expert. The falloff is really
| fast though, so it's basically harmless if you are just
| walking through... maybe the original intent was to stop
| people touching the walls :D like an electric fence
| without the need for power.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation
|
| [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/E
| xposure...
|
| [edit]
|
| Fixed various calculations.
| inejge wrote:
| The overlay gets that position wrong -- it's uSv/h
| (microsieverts, the transliterated legend is "mkZv/ch".)
| 11.37 mSv/h would be a radiological incident. The
| Australian lost density gauge capsule from a couple of
| days ago was 2-5 mSv/h.
| mrb wrote:
| Ah, that makes sense ! 11.37 uSv/hour is only about 28
| times higher than background radiation.
| retrac wrote:
| The average, of course, is just that, an average. There are
| some places that are naturally around 100 mSv dose annually,
| or some 50x higher, and places that are much lower than
| average. Under truly non-ideal conditions, like having a
| poorly-ventilated basement made out of uranium-rich
| limestone, it could probably get even higher than 100 mSv a
| year just from the radon.
|
| Speaking of which, radon gas is the main way in which uranium
| affects the health of people. Depending where you live and
| the construction methods, it may be worth getting your
| basement checked, and ventilated properly if necessary.
|
| Even the extreme scenario there is still far short of causing
| acute radiation sickness. People who live in such regions are
| sometimes exposed to such levels their whole lives, which can
| still be long and healthy. But not quite as long and healthy
| as those without such exposure, on average.
| pera wrote:
| Let's say you work in the station and your desk is right next
| to one of these uranium oxide glazed tiles:
|
| - You work about 2k hours per year in the orange office
|
| - That would then be about 200 mSv per year
|
| - "Exposure to 100 mSv a year is the lowest level at which
| any increase in cancer risk is clearly evident"
| (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-quake-radiation-
| idU...)
|
| I guess then that maybe we could (barely) observe a higher
| incidence of cancer for those who spend a lot of time next to
| the walls?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The "glued" on the GP is to be taken almost literally. I
| bet your desk doesn't put your back supported by the wall.
|
| Besides, Uranium radiation is mostly absorbed by the skin,
| and your skill will be replaced many times on that
| timeframe.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Not great, not terrible.
| albertzeyer wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/radiation/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose
|
| I'm not really sure about the unit of the measure here. So how
| does it compare really?
|
| You need to realize, we are exposed to radiation all the time.
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| > https://xkcd.com/radiation/
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose
|
| The "banana equivalent dose" is an error that refuses to die.
| Based on tables that estimate the effect of various radioactive
| isotopes acting for 50 years, people ignoring physiology
| decided that the average K40 in a banana will produce 0.078
| microsievert of damage (rounded to 0.1 because it's close
| enough for jazz and comics).
|
| The reality is that, due to homoeostasis, the excess potassium
| you ingest is eliminated the next time you piss, so there's no
| accumulation inside the organism. Those 50 years become
| something like 12 hours and the radiation exposure is more in
| the ballpark of 0.00000213 microsievert.
|
| But that value is now too small to use it in science fanboyism,
| isn't it?
|
| https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-05/documents/52...
| - page 156. That's where these people took the effective dose
| equivalent for K^40 from, but those values are for 50 years of
| exposure.
|
| "For radioisotopes of elements that are under tight homeostatic
| control by the human body, the inhalation or ingestion risk
| coefficients given in this document may not be appropriate for
| application to some exposure scenarios. For example, the
| ingestion risk coefficient for ^(40)K would not be appropriate
| for application to ingestion of ^(40)K in conjunction with an
| elevated intake of natural potassium. This is because the
| biokinetic model for potassium used in this document represents
| the relatively slow removal of potassium (biological half-time
| of 30 d) that is estimated to occur for typical intakes of
| potassium, whereas an elevated intake of potassium would result
| in excretion of a nearly equal mass of natural potassium, and
| hence of ^(40)K, over a short period." - ["Federal Guidance
| Report No. 13: Cancer Risk Coefficients for Environmental
| Exposure to Radionuclides"](https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/f
| iles/2015-05/documents/40...) - page 16
|
| So, if you accept that the duration of exposure from eating a
| banana is 12 hours instead of 50 years, a dental x-ray is the
| equivalent of eating 2,347,417 bananas.
| the_af wrote:
| > _But that value is now too small to use it in science
| fanboyism, isn 't it?_
|
| I don't understand, what is "science fanboyism"?
| stefantalpalaru wrote:
| [dead]
| Nitrolo wrote:
| EDIT: Someone linked to the Wikipedia article for uranium
| tiles, which says that the majority of the radiation comes from
| the decay products and is beta radiation[1]. Beta radiation has
| a weighing factor of 1, which means it's about 0.1 mSv/h. For
| comparison Wikipedia says:
|
| "90 mSv/h: Natural radiation on a monazite beach near
| Guarapari, Brazil."
|
| ================
|
| EDIT 2: Looking more closely it appears that the dosimeter in
| the video is switched to uSv/h, so it's reading 0.1 mSv/h
| anyway and the whole discussion below can be skipped if you're
| not interested in the difference between Gy and Sv.
|
| ==========
|
| Seems to be milliroentgen/h according to another commenter,
| which is an older unit. Today you'd use Gray (Gy), which is 1
| J/kg of energy deposited in material, and Sievert (Sv), which
| is Gy adjusted by a factor to account for different radiation
| types and body parts to get comparable biological effects.
|
| For soft tissue (~= humans) 1 R = 0.01 Gy, so the dose would be
| ~0.1 mGy/h. Converting that to Sievert is more complicated.
| Uranium is an alpha emitter, for which you'd use a weighing
| factor of 20 [0], getting 2mSv/h.
|
| 1 mSv/h = "NRC definition of a high radiation area in a nuclear
| power plant, warranting a chain-link fence." [0]
|
| However alpha radiation also gets blocked by very flimsy
| barriers, such as a few cm of air, or the layer of dead skin
| cells on your skin. So the effective dose might be closer to 0!
|
| You also have to consider that the decay products or Uranium
| are beta emitters. Beta rays have a weighing factor of 1, but
| they do penetrate deeper (stopped by a few feet of air, can
| penetrate the skin).
|
| The real effective dose in Sv depends on the exact ratio of
| decay products to U-238, and how deeply the beta rays of those
| products penetrate your body (there's different weighing
| factors for different body parts!).
|
| In conclusion: probably not too much, but radiation and
| radiation shielding is a complicated subject we managed to
| spend a whole semester on.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_tile
| funnym0nk3y wrote:
| I'm very surprised that radiation workers are allowed half the
| dose which is directly linked to cancer. Especially because you
| get that dose in two years, imagine how much you get over a 40
| year career.
| retrac wrote:
| Generally kept lower than that. Exceeding the human exposure
| threshold for a worker amounts to an international nuclear
| incident. Literally. Must be reported and the IAEA will do a
| full investigation and eventually assign it an International
| Nuclear Event Scale number. (7 = Chernobyl. 2 = Worker
| dropped a small vial of tritium gas and breathed it in.)
| vinaypai wrote:
| Given the level of radioactivity, it's safe to say you should not
| eat an excessive number of these tiles.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| What if I were to scrape those tiles and snort it?
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| It would be very bad for you.
|
| You know, because of all the silicates in your lungs. The
| radioactivity would probably not be very significant.
| grishka wrote:
| Other people at the station will start taking pictures of you
| mousetree wrote:
| Unlikely at U Rosenthaler Platz
| Symmetry wrote:
| I don't think I'd worry about that from a radiation standpoint.
| Natural uranium is only around 1000 times more radioactive than
| natural potassium, it's really not very bad in that sense and
| it wouldn't have survived from the birth of the solar system to
| the present day if it was.
|
| On the other hand, it is a toxic heavy metal so please, please
| don't eat it.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| And you'll get a lot more of that potassium into your body
| than uranium. So long as you don't eat such low-level things
| they're not a threat. (And, personally, I'm not convinced
| there's any threat. All of our estimates of the threat of
| radioactivity are based on high level exposures. IIRC it's
| about 100 Sieverts = 1 death. We project that linearly into
| the lose dose realms that are effectively impossible to test,
| but we have some data points that suggest the linear
| projection is not accurate and low level exposure is of much
| lower or possibly even negative threat--that the body's
| reaction to the low level radioactivity actually is
| protective. There is no relationship between cancer and
| background radioactivity. The threat of radon noted in
| uranium miners only shows up if they're also smokers--huh??)
| chmod775 wrote:
| > And you'll get a lot more of that potassium into your
| body than uranium.
|
| And your body needs potassium. In fact most humans don't
| get _enough_.
| papito wrote:
| Oh, that's right. Sometimes containers full of bananas will
| set off radiation alarms at shipping ports.
| mc32 wrote:
| People will leave them alone, as long as they're not filled
| with jelly.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| hahahaha
|
| For those not in the know, JFK immortalized the pastry from
| Berlin in his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.
|
| "Ich bin Berliner" -> I'm a citizen of Berlin
|
| "Ich bin ein Berliner" -> I'm a jelly donut.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Actually, the traditional stuffed donut-shaped fried pastry
| without hole is called pancake (Pfannkuchen) in Berlin
| whereas at other places of Germany a Pfannkuchen is the
| sweet souffle-like thing you make yourself in the pan
| called Eierkuchen in Berlin and elsewhere. Just saying, as
| native Berliners won't understand or take orders for
| "Berliners".
|
| Edit: what chiki said
| socksy wrote:
| This isn't true.[0] The difference between "Ich bin
| Berliner" and "Ich bin ein Berliner" is that the former
| says that you literally are from/living in Berlin, and the
| latter means you are figuratively speaking as like a
| Berliner. "Ich bin Clown" means that your job is to
| entertain people with face-paint on, whereas "Ich bin ein
| Clown" means that you sometimes behave clownishly.[1]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_bin_ein_Berliner#%22I
| _am_a...
|
| [1] https://language.mki.wisc.edu/essays/ich-bin-ein-
| berliner/
| hesk wrote:
| The source [1] is misleading to the point of being wrong.
| It is perfectly valid German to say "Ich bin ein Student"
| meaning that one is indeed a student. "Ich bin Clown" is
| not grammatical at all.
| loevborg wrote:
| It's funny how (presumably) native speakers make
| judgments about their own language.
|
| Of course you can say "Ich bin Clown" just as you can say
| "Ich bin Kaminfeger" or "Ich bin Physiotherapeut"
| chrisweekly wrote:
| OP here.
|
| FWIW, I'm not a native speaker but I did study German in
| high school and college, and used my moderate proficiency
| extensively while traveling in Germany (including Berlin in
| 1990), and Austria, and living in Prague. I've laughed with
| native Germans about the JFK speech (which story was first
| related to me by my hs German teacher), and regardless of
| its provenance / veracity, it makes for an interesting
| discussion. :)
|
| There's also a European liquor, bright blue in color, aptly
| named "Blau" (which word, "blau", is slang for drunk or
| intoxicated).
|
| As for varieties of sausage, "wieners" (Wien/Vienna), and
| Frankfurters (Frankfurt) were referred to as "hot dogs" by
| Parisian college students jokingly(?) describing their
| mysterious ingredients... (citation needed, but I did read
| that in a seemingly-reputable magazine.)
| fortran77 wrote:
| Du liegst falsch.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > There is a widespread misconception that Kennedy
| accidentally said a malapropism that he was a Berliner, a
| German doughnut specialty. This is an urban legend which
| emerged several decades after the speech, and it is not
| true that residents of Berlin in 1963 would have mainly
| understood the word "Berliner" to refer to a jelly doughnut
| or that the audience laughed at Kennedy's use of this
| expression.[2]
| Loic wrote:
| Especially because in Berlin they are known as _"
| Krapfen"_ and not as Berliner.
| fileeditview wrote:
| Buying a Berliner in Germany can be very challenging if
| you travel a lot. There are so many words for it
| depending on the region. At least: "Berliner", "Krapfen",
| "Pfannkuchen", "Krappel", "Kuchli" and probably others I
| don't know..
| saalweachter wrote:
| Has anyone made a map, like they do for eg soda/pop in
| the US?
| cratermoon wrote:
| Try buying a hogie, sub, hero, Italian, grinder, wedge,
| or spuckie in the US.
| throwanem wrote:
| _Spuckie?_
| superhuzza wrote:
| Apparently from spucadella, an italian-american word for
| a type of bread.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I've never heard anyone use it myself, but then I've
| never tried to order the sandwich otherwise known as a
| sub in the parts of the country where that name is used.
| grogenaut wrote:
| Wedge will get you a salad most places in the us. Hero
| might get you a gyro or ask for clarification. Grinders
| seem specities in much of the us.
| wcarron wrote:
| A 'hero' is just a gyro with bastardized spelling.
| mc32 wrote:
| The terms are unrelated [a sandwich named hero predates
| the appearance of the Greek item]; though they may sound
| the same depending on how they are pronounced. A hero is
| just a submarine sandwich by another name. A gyro is a
| pita-wrap --mostly pronounced like the 'gyro' in
| gyroscope but also like /yirou/ or /hirou/
| grogenaut wrote:
| I have seen Heroes that are much more like hoagies and I
| am seeing Heroes like the Greek rap depending on where
| you are in the countrymy point overall is there doesn't
| seem to be definitive things or just a lot of regional
| uses and spellings of these differentfood types by region
| so if you're cleaning that there's only one it probably
| means you haven't traveled enough
| soiler wrote:
| For all its faults, we can thank Subway for partially
| solving this problem.
| nkozyra wrote:
| Ich bin ein Hoagie
| licebmi__at__ wrote:
| Weird, I always have seen them in my nearest Rewe
| advertised as "Berliner". Never thought it was a problem
| in other stores.
| zorked wrote:
| Pfannkuchen in Berlin not Krapfen, I think?
| senand wrote:
| Indeed, Pfannkuchen in Berlin
| ben_w wrote:
| I've seen them sold here in Berlin under the names
| "Pfannkuchen" (not to be confused with pancakes),
| "Krapfen" (not as rude as it sounds in English),
| "Amerikaner" (not to be confused with an oversized iced
| soft cookie), and "Berliner" (not to be confused with the
| alcohol).
|
| Sometimes they're even sold as "Donut".
| ff10 wrote:
| Yes, Pfannkuchen is the name used in Berlin.
| culturestate wrote:
| That's what someone who grew up in Berlin would probably
| say, but the city being what it is it genuinely depends
| on which shop you're standing in. I've seen it every
| which way.
| chki wrote:
| Interesting. I have heard about this famous speech many
| times but I have never made the connection to the pastry
| "Berliner" (or heard anyone mention this association).
|
| Also, as a native German speaker, saying "Ich bin ein
| Berliner" is not unusual if you are talking about being a
| citizen of Berlin.
|
| I don't think that was a common association at the time as
| well. Especially since (pastry) "Berliners" are not called
| "Berliners" in Berlin but "Pfannkuchen" instead.
| verst wrote:
| Berliner and Pfannkuchen are very different pastries (at
| least in the Northwest of Germany). Pfannkuchen literally
| implies it is made in a pan, whereas a Berliner is
| typically deep fried. It often has a fruit jelly filling,
| but you will also find those without a filling.
|
| I agree that no native speaker would think of the pastry
| when hearing "Ich bin ein Berliner." Just like I wouldn't
| think of a sausage if someone were to say "Ich bin ein
| Frankfurter."
| locallost wrote:
| It's just an urban legend. Most people don't speak German
| so you can tell them anything you want :-).
|
| Speaking of which, good thing Kennedy never visited
| Hamburg.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I suppose that raises the question, if people from Berlin
| do indeed call themselves Berliners - do people from
| Hamburg call themselves Hamburgers? (genuine question)
| tasuki wrote:
| I don't see why not. Hamburger means "of Hamburg". If
| you're thinking about the food item, it isn't a funny
| coincidence or anything, its name is derived from
| Hamburg.
|
| I'm not German nor a linguist, YMMV.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Compare "Danish" as an American term for a Viennese
| pastry, "he's Danish" doesn't sound odd.
|
| We don't generally abbreviate foods named after places,
| but:
|
| "Cheddar is 200 miles from both Sandwich and Stilton."
|
| These are all places in England.
| triceratops wrote:
| Yes. Hence also the names Frankfurter and Wiener (Wien is
| Vienna, in German).
| mc32 wrote:
| Well, you're in luck, he did visit Frankfurt.
| dmichulke wrote:
| And Wien... (Vienna)
| mc32 wrote:
| Oh, if he'd only made it to Denmark, it'd be deliciously
| confusing.
| weard_beard wrote:
| Or Frankfurt!
| luoc wrote:
| Dit heest Pfannkuchen
| pigbearpig wrote:
| Can you not propagate urban legends please.
| odiroot wrote:
| That station is quite filthy, the glazing is the least of your
| problems.
| DJBunnies wrote:
| Hello there, fellow collector-but-not-eater!
| mhd wrote:
| I think that type of glazing was once somewhat popular for
| dinnerware. Gladly that got solved by the colors becoming quite
| unpopular after the 70s.
|
| (I'm aware that I'm writing this on "the orange site"...)
| Bedon292 wrote:
| Yes, Fiestaware. Where the most popular color was red, which
| originally used natural uranium oxide as the pigment in the
| glaze. It was actually WWII that saw the US government
| confiscate their stock of uranium in 1943. They used depleted
| uranium from 1959 to 1973 when the finally discontinued the
| red color. And an estimated 2 million pieces sold between
| 1959 and 1969. [1]
|
| And people collect them. I remember being a kid and looking
| at my grandmother's display of plates and being told they
| were radioactive. But only a little. You can also still find
| them on eBay easy enough.
|
| [1] https://www.orau.org/health-physics-
| museum/collection/consum...
| cafard wrote:
| A family I knew in Montgomery County, Maryland, dumped the
| pepper out of its Fiestaware shaker and took it to a fire
| station's test-your-stuff day. My recollection is that the
| pepper was not hazardous.
| dgfitz wrote:
| [flagged]
| cafard wrote:
| I don't know why. Perhaps because I never heard of
| hazardous substance days at firehouses elsewhere. Perhaps
| because it sounds less as if I made up the story.
| ender341341 wrote:
| Not necessarily a day, but I know that it's not uncommon
| for fire departments to do similar things for testing
| items for lead.
| renewiltord wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| baking wrote:
| Is test-your-stuff day common where you are from?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-
| income_countie...
| pastor_bob wrote:
| Vaseline Glass[0] is pretty common to find in antique stores
| if you want your own uraniumware
|
| [0]https://www.orau.org/health-physics-
| museum/collection/consum...
| superzamp wrote:
| _chuckles_
|
| glancing at my living room and seeing second-hand 70s orange
| antiques, glasses and dinnerware everywhere
| yanellena wrote:
| A lot of glassware had uranium and other radioactive
| materials in too.
|
| Here's a good subreddit for it in the wild:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/uraniumglass/
| exo-cortex wrote:
| Hm.... I've spent a lot of waiting time in this station
| (Rosenthaler Platz) over the years. And these tiles (in different
| colors though) are in a considerable amount of Berlin subway
| stations. Are they all radioactive like these here? Or is it only
| caused by the orange pigment?
| rcme wrote:
| The orange pigment was made with uranium.
| gilleain wrote:
| Specifically, Uranium Oxide (UO2, I guess? Or maybe the
| trioxide?):
|
| https://blog.colornavigator.net/dangerous-colors
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_trioxide
| stavros wrote:
| How many bananas is that like being exposed to?
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| For completeness, can we also get the measurement in
| dishwashers and american football fields?
| st_goliath wrote:
| Statute or nautical football fields?
| stavros wrote:
| Wait, are American football fields particularly radioactive?
| throw_a_grenade wrote:
| Serious answer would be, it depends on the underlying soil.
| Granite is particularly radioactive, to the point that
| yearly exposure to background radiation in Scandinavia (a
| granite penninsula) would be considered as crossing
| threshold of general population exposure to artificial
| sources (i.e. over background) in my country.
|
| Also, famously, the dose of radiation in one of the long
| term storage facilities nearby (measured on the floor,
| outside containers) is lower than in the main church in
| that town, which, you've guessed it, is built from granite
| blocks.
| fghorow wrote:
| It's not just granites or other igneous rocks.
|
| A major rock-forming mineral is Potassium Feldspar
| (K-spar to geologists). The weathering products of K-spar
| include many varieties of clay. Those, in turn, wind up
| incorporated in sedimentary rocks
|
| When logging a well for permeability -- an activity that
| occurs for both hydrocarbon and geothermal projects --
| detection of radio-emissions due to K is an indicator of
| sedimentary strata that are unlikely to have much
| permeability because the clays clog up the fluid-flow
| pathways.
|
| This has been today's lesson in geoscience. :D
|
| (Edit: typo.)
| yenda wrote:
| I would say a truckload, because bananas radiations are making
| just a bit more crack noises than the background, here the
| Geiger counter go crazy. But without the background reading and
| units it's hard to tell
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| Does this concern stations in the eastern part of Berlin only
| (former DDR part)?
| smcl wrote:
| The station was built in 1930, so the concept of DDR/BRD didn't
| exist yet
| tilsammans wrote:
| This is great, nice find. I grew up with Uranium-based Fiestaware
| in the house, and I am looking at a radioactive red vase right
| now. My dad was a ceramics engineer and researcher. He wrote the
| book on red ceramic glazes (The Defiant Red), and there is a
| whole chapter on Uranium.
| louthy wrote:
| I assume this is what Kraftwerk were banging on about
| janlukacs wrote:
| Trans-Europe Express!
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Kraftwerk famously sing about above ground trains, with "Trans-
| Europe Express," the freeway, with "Autobahn," and
| radioactivity, with "Radioactivity," but nothing I know of
| about the subway.
| xroche wrote:
| Everything is radioactive.
| https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/everything-emits-rad...
| SnowHill9902 wrote:
| All things are radioactive but some things are more radioactive
| than others.
| kreldjarn wrote:
| There are also radioactive tiles decorating the Caltech campus:
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/lapie/3340318920/
|
| Apparently there was a brief period in the 20th century when this
| was a popular way of making yellow glazing.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| google "radium girls"
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| not sure why I was downloaded. the radium girls painted
| radium on dials which glowed
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I was at an antique store where they had numerous pieces of
| Uranium glass glowing under a UV light last weekend.
|
| I think it's funny that Uranium has this connotation of "glowing
| in the dark" which has nothing to do with the nuclear properties
| at all but rather very interesting optical phenomena that happen
| when you have an atom with a huge number of electrons like the
| way Thorium Oxide is good for gas lamps because it emits
| thermally in the visible range but not so much in the infrared.
| the8472 wrote:
| Some isotopes do glow in the dark if sufficiently enriched, due
| to their decay heat.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plutonium_pellet.jpg
| PaulHoule wrote:
| That Pu238 pellet is surrounded by ash, I think they buried
| it in ash to hold the heat in and then uncovered it so you
| could see the glow. In this case it is driven by heat
| transport so the bigger of a mass you have the more the ratio
| of volume to area and the more it heats up.
|
| That's very different scaling from this kind of thing
|
| https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:36003591
| idiocrat wrote:
| Many (or most) of the natural marble kitchen countertops are
| radioactive, especially the dark spots. Perhaps not hazardous, if
| epoxy glazed.
|
| If I were to build a house, I would walk all materials with a
| geiger counter, especially alpha particles. Sometimes difficult
| to replace material, if it is already worked into the structure.
| jonty wrote:
| This is my toot, but the credit (and possibly the link) should be
| to @gigabecquerel:
| https://chaos.social/@gigabecquerel/109818433760462038
|
| There are other stations on the U-Bahn with uranium tiles too,
| you can find them with the crowdsourced Safecast radiation map:
| https://map.safecast.org/?y=52.5002&x=13.4852&z=13&l=0&m=9
| dewey wrote:
| Thanks! I parsed that toot wrongly, should've submitted the
| other URL. Maybe dang can update it.
|
| (Wish we had quote-posts on Mastodon, would make it more
| obvious)
| jordigh wrote:
| I don't like the idea of Twitter-like quoting. Linking to the
| original toot is fine, it's clear that there's a link.
|
| The Twitter-like quoting was used way too much for abuse. It
| had legitimate uses, but the abuse it generates does not
| warrant the legitimate uses.
|
| Plus, it always made things so weird to read.
| 2. The reply 1. The original 3.
| The replies to the reply
|
| You say you find linking confusing right now, but it's just a
| matter of getting used again to the idea that links exist and
| can be followed, without always having a link preview. I find
| Twitter-quoting confusing because it messes up the order of
| the conversation.
| mlindner wrote:
| Can we just call them "posts" instead of "toot"?
| jordigh wrote:
| No! :)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34696041
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| You can! I love calling them toots but it's perfectly
| fine to call them posts.
|
| For anyone unfamiliar, "toot" is the sound an elephant
| makes and a mastodon is a prehistoric elephant. Just like
| a bird tweets, a mastodon toots.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| This has been discussed to death on mastodon already.
| However recently the mastodon devs added this feature to
| their short list of what they are working on. (I think they
| said they are "exploring" it.)
|
| Quote toots offer a functionality not offered by other
| functions, which is the ability to show two toots at once
| as well as notify the original toot owner of this activity.
| Linking another toot has a pretty horrible UX in
| comparison. Last time I clicked on a linked toot, it opened
| a new tab to view it, and then in order to click like on
| that toot I was instructed by the UI to copy the toot
| address to yet another mastodon window in to the search
| bar. An absolute mess.
|
| Quote toots allow side discussions while allowing everyone
| to see what is being discussed. And they're great when
| someone has a long thread and you want to pull out one
| piece to share with your followers and add context like
| "this piece of the puzzle is particularly important."
|
| The fact that it changes the order of the conversation is
| the point. Conversations fork in ways not always conducive
| to a reply-only view.
|
| I primarily want quote toots so I can quote myself to start
| fresh threads that build on old ones. I did this all the
| time on Twitter where I posted a thread of updates for
| every evening that I worked on a project, with a new thread
| quoting the last one for each new evening. Since replies
| and links don't show the other posts, it's not as clear
| what I'm talking about when I link to an old toot and say
| "I made progress on this project tonight" given the awful
| UX on link toots.
| jordigh wrote:
| The recent wave of Twitter immigration has reignited the
| quote-toot discussion. People mostly want a silly copy of
| a half-baked Twitter feature. If we get something like it
| in Mastodon, I hope it's better thought-out. For example,
| editing toots was done in an entirely sane way: it's just
| plain possible to edit toots, and if someone edits a toot
| you boosted, you get notified, so people can't fool you
| initially and then insert a completely different idea in
| your timeline.
| dewey wrote:
| Don't want to start a side discussion here, but what I like
| about quote tweets is that I can see the quoted content
| without having to click out to another tab and go back and
| forth. Could probably handled with some auto-expanding by
| clients though.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Any idea why is Kaskelstrasse so high ? Could it be the
| cobblestone ?
| Krasnol wrote:
| > you can find them with the crowdsourced Safecast radiation
| map: https://map.safecast.org/?y=52.5002&x=13.4852&z=13&l=0&m=9
|
| Oooh that's nice. I wish they'd have those kits in sale again.
| Would buy one instantly but no time for fiddling myself this
| year unfortunately...
| secondcoming wrote:
| First I've heard of a 'toot'!
|
| It's pretty funny due to it's usage in UK slang. It can mean
| everything from smoking a cigarette, to snorting cocaine, to
| oral sex.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| That's true, but those uses of the word are pretty obscure. I
| would say the most common meaning of "toot" in the UK is the
| noise a horn makes, especially a bicycle/car/train horn.
|
| It's much more of a friendly word for toddlers than it is a
| slang word for debauchery. (Example: "Toot! Toot! Packed full
| of fun and games, it's the Thomas & Friends Annual 2022!",
| https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thomas-Friends-Annual-Packed-
| games/...)
| jordigh wrote:
| Some of us who have been on Mastodon for a few years now
| insist on calling them toots, despite the official renaming
| in the original Mastodon repo. A toot is the sound elephant
| friend (our mascot) makes with their trunk.
|
| Also it's silly and all of the other silly associations you
| have with it are a plus. "Twitter", "tweet", "google",
| "facebook", "amazon", "apple", "mac", "tumblr", "kindle" are
| all also pretty stupid names we've just gotten used to, but
| "toot" is OUR stupid name, and we made it ours, and if its
| silliness delays the corporate takeover of Mastodon, that's a
| huge plus.
| jwx48 wrote:
| In my particular American-English dialect, it means
| flatulence.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Thus the school-boy doggerel, "Beans, beans, the wonderful
| fruit..."
| jwineinger wrote:
| I learned it as "the musical fruit" or "good for the
| heart"
| dewey wrote:
| https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/pull/16080
|
| They officially switched from "toot" to "post" a few months
| ago.
| omoikane wrote:
| Mastodon Renaming "Toots" to "Posts"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26882318
| Nursie wrote:
| Or "fart", don't forget that one!
| sbst32 wrote:
| Can you tell me how to find other stations with the Safecast
| map? Rosenthaler Platz station is just blue all-around on that
| map - maybe I'm doing something wrong?
| [deleted]
| dewey wrote:
| Looking at this Safecast map, do you know how these values are
| collected? From the path it looks like it's some kind of mobile
| collection where user submit data? Are there people walking
| around with Geiger counters every day?
| cptcobalt wrote:
| Safecast is the most interesting part of this.
| azubinski wrote:
| "Uranium tiles" are well known.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_tile
|
| Personal radiation doses are well known.
| https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/around-us/calculator...
|
| Social. Chaos. OK.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > Social. Chaos. OK
|
| "Chaos" likely relates to "Chaos Computer Club"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_Computer_Club and related
| activities in that part of the world.
|
| A person running around Berlin with a Geiger counter (not on
| official business) is a CCC kind of hacker.
|
| Of course this comes to us via Jonty Wareing
| (@jonty@chaos.social ), who is involved with the related EMF (
| https://www.emfcamp.org/ ) event in the UK.
|
| The Suffix "social" means "this is the social media (mastodon)
| host".
|
| In fact it says here https://chaos.social "chaos.social - a
| Fediverse instance for & by the Chaos community"
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Ah that's actually my local ubahn station. I assume the risk is
| pretty minimal. Unless you spend a lot of time in close proximity
| to those tiles. Like some homeless people seem to be doing.
| ff10 wrote:
| Apparently the amount of radiation is safe:
|
| > Auch an einem eher ungewohnlichen Ort haben die Mitarbeiter der
| Behorde schon Messungen durchgefuhrt. Der U-Bahnhof Rosenthaler
| Platz ruckte wegen seiner vielen orangefarbenen Kacheln ins
| Visier der Behorde. ,,Die Farbe wird mit dem Schwermetall Uran
| hergestellt, weil es beim Brennvorgang sehr hitzebestandig ist",
| sagt Leps. Die Strahlung ist laut dem Experten jedoch belanglos.
| Auch fur Menschen, die sich langer auf dem U-Bahnhof aufhalten,
| besteht keine Gefahr.
|
| In short: "According to experts the radiation is trivial."
|
| Source (from the toot thread):
| https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/bleibende-werte-1545553.h...
| al2o3cr wrote:
| I agree: if somebody goes around licking the walls in subway
| stations, a few extra beta particles are the LEAST of their
| worries :P
| gus_massa wrote:
| It's strange that the count increase too much near the wall.
|
| If you have a 1/r^2 decreasement from a point source, the if you
| have an infinite wall it becomes a constant value that does not
| decrease with the distance.
|
| Clearly the wall is not infinite, but when the distance from the
| wall is much smaller (1/5?) than the distance to the border of
| the wall, the approximation is good enough. The wall is like 8
| tiles tall , so I expect the radioactivity at 1/2 tile (15cm,
| 5in) to be almost equal to the radioactivity when the counter is
| touching the wall.
| gnramires wrote:
| Good question. Another intuitive way to view (no pun intended)
| 1/r^2 law is that the solid angle visible from an isotropic
| emitter (like supposedly this wall) gives the exact decay
| coefficient. So near the surface the solid angle is like 1/2
| sphere (1/2 4pi), and doesn't change much with distance. Only
| when you get a bit further away it starts to decrease.
|
| Eventually at large distances, any finite object will have the
| apparent radius decay as 1/r and solid angle as 1/r^2.
|
| I think in this case it could be atmospheric absorption or just
| getting near a peak point of emission.
| penteract wrote:
| Does that apply if the emitter is neither coherent nor
| opaque? If we were interested in gamma radiation, is the sum
| from each part of an infinite wall infinite (if we pretend
| the wall and the air are perfectly transparent to gamma
| rays)?
| hanslub42 wrote:
| Uranium (both U238 and U235) is an alpha-emitter. Alpha
| particles travel at most a few centimeters in air.
| gus_massa wrote:
| That's a good explanation!
|
| I made a mistake and assumed it was Beta or Gamma radiation
| that travel easier in air.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| This is U8, though.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| (that's the name of the subway line for any non-Berliners
| who might be confused)
| perihelions wrote:
| Yes, I noticed that too. I think it's mainly beta radiation
| close to the wall. It would be attenuated by air absorption
| further away.
| tomxor wrote:
| > If you have a 1/r^2 decreasement from a point source, the if
| you have an infinite wall it becomes a constant value that does
| not decrease with the distance.
|
| It will still decrease with distance. If you represent the wall
| as a collection of point sources distributed over a plane, as
| the distance to the plane diminishes, the distance to
| individual points do not diminish to and from the same distance
| as each other, and do not diminish at the same rate. However
| they still _all_ diminish, and thus the sum intensity must
| diminish. Though the appropriate function describing the sum of
| the contributions from each point is no longer 1 /d^2.
|
| There will be some continuous equation to describe this...
| someone more familiar with radiance feel free to chime in!
| thehappypm wrote:
| They're referencing a classic Electricity & Magnetism proof.
| Given an infinite sheet of uniform charge density, the
| electric field is constant at all distances from the sheet,
| which is deeply unintuitive.
| tomxor wrote:
| That is unintuitive, but then is my mistake only in
| representing the wall as an infinite plane? Would my parent
| comment still be true for a finite plane, or is that merely
| technically true but missing the point of the function
| shape being _almost_ constant up to some threshold
| (depending on the limits of the finite plane).
|
| I feel like I want to plot this now to build an intuition.
| penteract wrote:
| If you're looking down at an infinite plane, then the
| plane occupies half your field of view (assuming you have
| a 360 degree field of view) no matter how far you are
| from it. Given a 2d object of uniform density, the
| component of the gravitational force towards that object
| in the direction perpendicular to the plane it lies in is
| proportional to the solid angle of your field of view it
| occupies. For an infinite plane, the components in other
| directions cancel out. I think this is related to how a
| sphere acts equivalently to a point at its center - an
| infinite plane is just a sphere of infinite radius.
|
| The situation is similar for an opaque light source
| (apart from the lack of atmosphere in the way, I don't
| think the sun would be much brighter if you were much
| closer to it and looking through a pinhole), but I'm not
| sure it applies to gamma radiation which is emitted
| uniformly in all directions from each point and treats
| most stuff as pretty transparent - unless there's some
| weird interference you don't get to cancel out the parts
| coming from different directions.
| tomxor wrote:
| Yes, I actually kind of get the infinite part, but thanks
| for the explanation it's interesting. I was wondering
| what the intensity looks like for a distance field around
| a _finite_ plane and how that relates. This might be
| harder to describe.
|
| What I'm suspecting is that under a certain distance for
| a given finite plane it's almost constant similar to the
| infinite version, but outside of that distance there must
| be some non uniform falloff function.
| penteract wrote:
| For a finite circle, where you're on a line perpendicular
| to it going through its center, the gravitational force
| you experience towards it is exactly proportional to the
| amount of your field of view it occupies - if I'm right,
| that should be proportional to `1-cos(atan(r/d))` where r
| is the radius of the circle and d is the distance between
| you and the center of the circle.
| gus_massa wrote:
| You are correct. For a short distance it's a almost a
| constant 1 like an infinite wall with the same charge
| density. For a long distance is almost 1/r^2 like
| punctual source. For an intermediate distance, it's a
| mess and you hope nobody ask for an exact solution.
|
| A rectangle is a mess. It's easier with a circle. The
| approximations at short and long distance are the same,
| but a circle has an "easy" formula in between.
| http://hyperphysics.phy-
| astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/elelin.h... 1-x/sqrt(x^2+R^2)
| where R is the radio of the circle. Let's use R=10 to
| keep it simple.
|
| For a short distance 0<x<R/10, then it's almost a
| constant https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1-x%2Fsqr%2
| 8x%5E2%2B10%...
|
| For a long distance, x>4R it's almost like R^2/(2*x^2) ht
| tps://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1-x%2Fsqr%28x%5E2%2B10
| %...
|
| There are some trick to add more term to the
| approximations to reduce the middle part where both
| approximations are bad, like using A+Bx or A+Bx+Cx^3 for
| short distance and D/x^2+E/x^4 or D/x^2+E/x^4+F/x^4 for
| long distance. It depends on how much you care about the
| precision and how many calculations you want to do.
|
| In some particular cases like a circle or the shell of a
| sphere there are closed formulas for the intermediate
| distances. In other cases there is no nice formula.
| AdamN wrote:
| The problem is that this wall does not exist in a vacuum
| - the OPs comment is otherwise valid. The air is
| absorbing the radiation (very effectively).
| tomxor wrote:
| Yes, I understand that. I'm wondering separately (in a
| vacuum if you will), what the falloff looks like with a
| finite plane, and how that relates to the infinite
| version. Obviously we cannot actually represent the wall
| as an infinite plane, from my current location it's
| accurate enough to represent it as a point source... so
| there is some threshold for a particular finite plane
| after which the "constant" nature is clearly not true.
| rubberpoliceman wrote:
| I don't think that's unintuitive. What goes into a source-
| free volume element has to go out of that volume element
| (radiation or field).
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| We have a long tradition of uran-containing glass and ceramic
| objects/tiles/decoration/tableware.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_tile
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_glass
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Old watches used radium dials.
|
| This reminds me of cloisonne paint.
|
| Many antique pendants, earrings, etc., used Uranium Oxide orange
| paint.
|
| Orange is actually a difficult color to make. Another dangerous
| orange is Cadmium Orange (I used to be an artist, and probably
| breathed in the paint, as I used it in an airbrush).
| matheweis wrote:
| > Old watches used radium dials.
|
| Some new watches have luminescent dials that contain tritium,
| also a radioisotope.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Uranium ore: https://www.amazon.com/Images-SI-Uranium-
| Ore/dp/B000796XXM
| [deleted]
| LarryMullins wrote:
| U238-Bahn
| snshn wrote:
| A little bit of radiation is probably good for you.
| jesperwe wrote:
| Make me worry more about conditions for the workers in the tile
| factory than for the U-Bahn travellers...
| mseepgood wrote:
| They're long dead, even if they survived the war. This was
| built more than 90 years ago.
| [deleted]
| mahathu wrote:
| There are around half a dozen or so homeless people sleeping in
| this particular station every night, way more now during
| winter. I'm worried about them. Not like they didn't have
| enough issues besides the walls they sleep next to being
| radioactive.
| rom-antics wrote:
| This seems like a particularly evil example of hostile
| architecture
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_architecture
| Raydovsky wrote:
| I think in Germamy the danger of radiation is overblown. It's
| really hard to get any radiation damage from low intensity
| sources.
|
| Hell, even chernobyl is projected to cause at most 4k
| premature deaths over 50+ years.
| durnygbur wrote:
| You are about 80 years too late to worry about Polish and
| Jewish slave labourers.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| The station was opened in April 1930, three years before the
| the national-socialists took over.
| heywhatupboys wrote:
| not everything in Germany in the 1930's was built by slave
| labour
| durnygbur wrote:
| some private houses probably weren't haha
| junon wrote:
| Welp. No idea how many times I've walked through there....
| gpjanik wrote:
| Quite a few homeless people stay around for the entire day in
| this station, leaning against these tiles all the time. Would
| anyone be able to tell if this is a health risk?
| snitch182 wrote:
| No it is not. The station would be locked otherwise.
| gpjanik wrote:
| That's poor reasoning.
| wongarsu wrote:
| If they are always sitting in front of the tiles, leaning on
| them with their back, they might have higher skin cancer rates
| on their back.
|
| But generally, the effect of frequent low doses isn't very well
| understood, and you could even find specific circumstances
| where it might be beneficial.
| kzrdude wrote:
| It's likely a coat is enough to shield the alpha and beta
| decays completely
| nemo44x wrote:
| Being homeless is probably a much greater health risk.
| Especially the cigarettes everyone still smokes in Berlin.
| crucialfelix wrote:
| Smoking cigarettes is much rarer than it used to be here.
|
| But I've seen homeless guys openly smoking Heroin in the
| U-Bahn stations. And many of them drink a lot of alcohol.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| supernova87a wrote:
| I wonder if this gives the tiles any kind of antiseptic (or even
| other) property to them, unintentionally.
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