From: Ralph Seguin 
To: kwhitefire{at}juno.com, mdholm{at}telerama.com
Cc: mlbrown{at}everstrive.com, atm{at}shore.net
Reply-To: Ralph Seguin 


> > Meanwhile I just realized that cerium oxide
> probably isn't a good thing to
>
> > have floating around the house these days (even
> > though I am pretty neat about it).

> I haven't read anything indicating cerium oxide is
> toxic, and I don't recall
> anybody on the atm list saying so.  It probably does
> contain a quite small trace
>
> of radioactivity, but this is a well known problem
> that has been worked on for a
> long time, and the consensus of both the pro's, the
> amateurs, the radiation
> health physics guys and the Feds is that the amount
> and type of radioactive
> material in current cerium oxide products isn't
> enough to worry about.  There
> were some products on the market some time back that
> were hot enough that one
> should have been more careful with them, but they
> are off the market now.
> Sometimes someone digging in the back of a closet
> turns some up, but if you
> bought your supplies reasonably recently, there
> shouldn't be a problem.

I have used a good geiger counter to check a couple of different batches of
CeO, and I was unable to detect radioactivity beyond background noise.
Calibration sample provided (Uranium?) was very mildly radioactive and very
easily detected.

-Ralph


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - establish your business online http://webhosting.yahoo.com

--- BBBS/NT v4.00 MP