On Mon, 23 Feb 2015 10:00:01 -0000, Martin Brown wrote:

On 20/02/2015 14:41, Tough Guy no. 1265 wrote:

Kinda makes a mockery of the little slightly might be possibly dangerous
things that H&S goes for nowadays, I guess they're bored.

http://www.techienews.co.uk/9723830/...isplay-museum/

You wouldn't get it past H&S today but that doesn't mean it is the
worlds most dangerous toy. I expect some of the early dodgy small steam
engines have killed and maimed far more youngsters that anything else.

Uranium ore isn't particularly dangerous unless you crush it and eat it
(and even then it isn't all that bad). Uranium photographic intensifier
was once commonplace and uranium glass is still easily available today.

https://www.google.com/patents/US1882426

Uranium is present at trace levels in many rocks at 2ppm. What is rare
is uranium ore with a commercially viable U concentration in it.

Often associated with much hotter radium which may actually represent a
fair proportion of the observed disintegrations.

There is a fair amount of depleted uranium about being used as weights
and as a screen for radioactivity! It turns out that putting a
comparatively thin layer of steel and lead either side allows you to
exploit its high density without it contributing to the count rate.

You can handle DU wrapped in a sheet of paper or plastic sheet without
any significant risk. Most of the alpha particles are stopped by that
and it isn't all that hot to begin with.

My fathers WWII era radium luminous watch would set off radiation alarms
and I used it as a source of alpha particles when I built my own cloud
chamber. It was a seriously hot thing and very bad for the girls that
painted the dials and licked their brushes ...

How did steam engines kill?

--
Men are like bagpipes. You won't get anything unless you blow them first.