![]() While the luminous zinc sulfide is likely dead and burned away from the constant hot radium bombardment in 90% of the 1930s - 1960s watches, hit it with a geiger counter and you'll get unbelievable cpm's, as hot as it was the day it was applied. I ended up purchasing a few geiger counters and I'm also 32 miles east of where the Radium Girls took place in Ottawa Illinois. My passion for vintage watches actually lead me down the entire study of radioactivity. I am a huge vintage Rolex fan and they, like other Swiss watch producers, agreed to swich from radium to tritium around 1964 in an effort to reduce exposure to both the wearer and production staff. I've become fascinated by the entire top of radioactive luminous compounds. Disposal means burying it in the center of a large lump of concrete and then burying that. You'd basically have to call the appropriate government department, or a professional, to arrange for pickup and safe disposal. Once received into your possession it's illegal and unethical to destroy, throw away, reship, or basically do anything with the radioactive material. You're essentially shipping around a weapon, and as they say "ignorance is no excuse" in the law. Shipping somebody a potentially harmful radioactive material without is would be comparable to shipping somebody a poison, which is a criminal offense. Around half of the packages I've received containing radium are over this legal threshold and so were sent illegally at a danger to everyone who came in contact with the box. The deteriorating radium lume is essentially a loose radioactive dust emitter and is illegal to ship even under this threshold. But this is for packages clearly marked as radioactive and containing some stable kind of radioactive material in an appropriate container. Each country has a figure for the amount of radiation on the outside of the box, etc. It's also illegal to ship radium in almost every case. But once it's entered your body you're being exposed to it continuously, at 0 distance (because its inside you) for decades. Hence why spending a few minutes or hours with a radium watch is theoretically not that harmful. The two main factors affecting the amount of radiation you receive are the distance between you and the radioactive material, and the length of time of exposure. So just breathing near a radium watch is dangerous. ![]() Even a light touch on the lume will transfer radium dust onto your hand, which can easily end up in your body one way or another. ![]() As it deteriorates that paint is releasing tiny particles of radium into the air, which can then be inhaled. Radium lume is extremely dangerous not because of how radioactive it is, but because the non-radium part of the paint is very old and is deteriorating. I've been told jokingly by numerous watchmakers and sellers that as long as I don't eat the paint, it's not dangerous. I did a lot of research of the safety of this and how to handle it, and what I found has left me quite concerned about the lack of information and blaisé attitude many watchmakers and collectors have to this.įirstly, radium is not that radioactive. All watches with glow-in-the-dark lume on the dial and/or hands, usually identifiable on photos as a rough white paint, manufactured before the 60s, contain radium. Frequently, I receive watches containing radium-226, almost always without any mention of this from the seller. ![]() I've been amassing old watch parts as part of my journey to create custom watches from scrapped parts. ![]()
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