Must be National Geiger Counter Week
By adamg - 11/30/11 - 5:14 pm
For the second day in a row, a Boston hazmat crew has had to deal with possible radiation where it doesn't belong, this time in a box in somebody's basement on Julian Street in Dorchester.
The Boston Fire Department reports somebody found an old, padlocked wooden box in the basement of the triple decker at 64 Julian St. around 2 p.m. It had markings indicating it might be hazardous, so the person called 911.
Both fire crews and the Boston Police bomb dog responded; a Fire Department radiation meter showed a bit of activity.
"Radiation levels from the box were low and within accepted limits," the department says. Technicians will take the box to a Fire Department facility to await "proper disposal."
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Comments
So?
What was inside?
We may know in the morning
Steve MacDonald at BFD says he hopes to have more details then. From what he knows now, it sounds like some kind of surveying equipment. Did surveyors use isotopes for something?
Did you forget about this
Did you forget about this already?
http://www.universalhub.com/2011/workers-oneill-building-exposed-low-levels-radiati
Im not sure what they used to use, but this isnt the first time this year BFD has responded for unknown radioactive material that turned out to be surveying equipment. Better labeling probably wasnt a concern when that box was packed away, but nowadays, it says radioactive and we dont (and shouldnt) take a chance and assume its nothing. But hell, you toss some smoke detectors in a locked box and it will be an unknown that gives of detectable radiation.
Depends on the equipment
I can't speak to all surveying equipment, but some mid-century high-quality lenses for cameras and surveying equipment had thorium dioxide in the glass itself to increase refraction and decrease dispersion. The glass will make a geiger counter dance, but the radiation itself isn't terribly interesting, and really isn't all that dangerous compared to, say, gamma radiation. You pretty much have to swallow the alpha emitter for it to make you sick.