>
> Peter,
>
> I too doubt that what Judy has is dangerous unless she starts eating it;
> however, a lot depends on what is in the bag and how old it is. I know that
> when uranium was used to color glass, the glassware was radioactive enough
> to be detected by a GM counter. There was a time when little was known
> about the effects of radiation. If it were me I would still have it tested.
> BTW, it is not possible to remove all the radioactive material from uranium
> compounds since (1) uranium itself is radioactive and (2) it decays into
> other radioactive isotope which are in turn radioactive and decay into
> other radioactive isotopes etc etc (like radium, radon, lead, bismuth etc)
> These daughter isotopes could be removed but is suspect it would be
expensive.
Bob
There is no argument that uranium is radioactive - I though I made that clear.
However uranium is naturally a mixture of isotopes. Some of these - the more
dangerous - have applications in the nuclear industry, other do not, thus
uranium is isotopically separated on a large scale and the material used for
chemical production is depleted in the more dangerous isotopes. I think the
materials I used to have in the lab were labelled in some way to indicated
that they were made from 'depleted' uranium.
Peter Marshall
On Fixing Shadows, Dragonfire and elsewhere:
http://faraday.clas.virginia.edu/~ds8s/
Family Pictures & Gay Pride: http://www.dragonfire.net/~gallery/
and: http://www.speltlib.demon.co.uk/