[HN Gopher] Vaseline and Uranium Glass (ca. 1930s)
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Vaseline and Uranium Glass (ca. 1930s)
Author : keepamovin
Score : 55 points
Date : 2024-08-16 14:26 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.orau.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.orau.org)
| xutopia wrote:
| I'm having a hard time knowing how dangerous it is to drink once
| from one of those glasses. How many times till I reach dangerous
| dose?
| Scaevolus wrote:
| The dangers of consuming uranium are mostly because it's a
| heavy metal-- so the risk profile is similar to lead crystal
| glasses.
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| It's right in the article. It's basically nothing. Stress
| caused by using these glasses would cause more damage than
| radiation from them.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| They're pretty much only dangerous (given normal use) if they
| get broken, and even then, only if some of the dust gets
| inside of you.
| dav_Oz wrote:
| > _Landa and Councell evaluated the leaching of uranium into
| different solutions over a 24 hour period. The glassware they
| used was designed to hold liquids (e.g., drinking glasses).
| They determined that the average resulting concentrations of
| uranium were 0.052 ug /liter (1.7 x 10-11 uCi/ml) for water and
| 5.9 ug/liter (2 x 10-9 uCi/ml) for acetic acid. The highest
| measured concentrations were 0.63 ug/liter (2.1 x 10-10 uCi/ml)
| in water and 30.1 ug/liter (1 x 10-8 uCi/ml) in acetic acid.
| They noted that less uranium would leach into solution when the
| experiment was repeated. The presumed explanation is that less
| and less leachable uranium becomes available._
|
| According to the WHO[0] the tolerable daily intake (TDI) for
| uranium is 0.6 ug/kg body weight per day. So, 42 ug/day for a
| 70kg/150lbs person.
|
| Worst case scenario for drinking 5l of water daily from those
| glasses would give oral exposure to 3.15 ug in total. Even if
| you were for some reason a vinegar enthusiast 1l/day would
| leave you with "only" 30ug.
|
| Maybe you want to err on the side of caution and don't try
| pickling with those.
|
| [0]https://www.wise-uranium.org/utox.html
| imglorp wrote:
| If you're interested in other artifacts, you might also be
| interested in Fiestaware, some colors of which had U in the glaze
| until the mid forties. Here's one from my collection, moderately
| active. For comparison, background is about 0.2 uSv/hour.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/U11rTao
|
| And then there's the Revigator. I have no idea how many people
| died from this thing.
|
| https://orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/radioactiv...
| dav_Oz wrote:
| Interestingly, the most toxic thing about the _Revigator_ wasn
| 't its added "radioactivity" through Radon to the water but its
| leaden spout combined with the impurities leaked considerable
| amount of arsenic, lead and vanadium into the water[0]
|
| [0]https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2010/01/what-were-
| they...
| imglorp wrote:
| Interesting! Nice find.
| soperj wrote:
| haha, the Revigator had a lead spout. So it was poisoning you
| many different ways!
| tananaev wrote:
| Revigator did prevent illnesses like arthritis by killing you
| with cancer before you can develop them.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Anecdote: According to a Univ. of Michigan Chemistry Prof, early
| 1980's, that Dept. had a brilliant orange ceramic coffee mug.
| It'd been purchased (and presumably made) at some Native American
| reservation in the Southwest, and was pretty radioactive.
| Supposedly, the Dept's Tenure Committee use it to serve coffee to
| the prospect when their decision was "no".
|
| These days, one would hope that the mug has long since been
| retired to a museum basement or something. Both because of the
| not-so-subtle malice of offering it, and because of the likely
| fates of the Native American potters who worked with that
| radioactive glaze.
| Loughla wrote:
| Fun fact: nearly every estate sale in the Midwest US has both
| Vaseline and uranium glass pieces in them. And it's cheap to buy.
| myself248 wrote:
| Came here to mention this. I skim through the Estatesales.net
| listings every thursday planning my visits for the coming
| weekend, and I pluck out a few categories of items that I know
| some friends are interested in. Uranium glass is one of those.
| (Along with "classic video games", "landline phones", "film
| cameras", "typewriters", etc.)
|
| In something like 6 months (I started 10 months ago but took a
| break in the middle), I've found 77 sales with likely or
| confirmed pieces. The most common, by far, is a little citrus
| juicer. Eeeeeeeeeveryone has that juicer.
| Loughla wrote:
| I've been looking for a small, knobby, dark blue uranium
| glass toothpick holder for decades.
|
| My grandparents had one, and my earliest memories are getting
| a toothpick for Grandpa after supper when he quit smoking
| when I moved in with them.
|
| I would kill to find one of those just for the memories! It's
| the only reason I set auction alerts for uranium glass.
| amelius wrote:
| I always wonder how chemists make compounds that are colorless.
| For example, most shaving cream contains lots of chemical
| components, yet is completely white. If I would mix even a small
| number of random chemical components the result would certainly
| not be white (probably closer to brown). Perhaps someone can
| explain how this works from an engineering perspective.
|
| (And also interesting in this context are odorless compounds).
| hermitcrab wrote:
| Shaving cream is mostly soap, isn't it? Also I wonder that it's
| whiteness (reflects all colours equally) isn't at least partly
| due to it's physical structure (lots of bubbles).
|
| However it is true that randomly mixing lots of different
| coloured components together does mostly end up with something
| brown (cf playdo and shit).
| samuraiseoul wrote:
| Collecting this is a fun hobby to get into! If you wanna learn
| more, feel free to join my Discord server!
| https://discord.gg/k2gewm3E
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