"Martin H. Eastburn"
wrote in message
...
Not so sure - as it is a high Alpha emitter -
used in Vacuum tubes for massive currents -
with a very long lifetime. TH 232 is close to
the famous U 238 isolated by 1 element called
Protactinium.
By the way - U is an alpha source also.

The Alpha emitters can cause eye damage. You
state it was all a mental illness.
I think that was bad science running rough shod
over victims. Just like agent orange and .....

Martin

Martin Eastburn
@ home at Lions' Lair with our computer
lionslair at consolidated dot net
NRA LOH & Endowment Member
NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder
IHMSA and NRA Metallic Silhouette maker & member


Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article
,
xray wrote:


On Wed, 22 Mar 2006 20:03:09 -0600, "Martin H.
Eastburn"
wrote:


The Captains and near - would be able to see
better
with the radioactive lenses.

Any logical explanation for why radioactive
glass (I presume thats where
the radioactivity was) would be better
optically? Seems odd. The
radioactivity can't matter by itself can it?


Thorium oxide based glasses have a very
different combination of refractive index and
dispersion than other glasses available at the
time, allowing better correction of optical
abberations.

Thorium is only very slightly radioactive, and
the health problems were psychosomatic, not
physical, for users of the resulting optical
systems. Manufacturers had to be more careful,
as they were exposed to the dust resulting from
grinding lenses.

Joe Gwinn

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How can alpha emitters cause any damage unless
they are ingested? A piece of paper will stop an
alpha particle as they are pretty low in energy.