Radium coated instruments

[panzerplatten]

Just read this article on BBC news site, about the danger posed from buried instruments from over a thousand ww2 bombers dismantled on RAF base in Scotland, did the luftwaffe use a similar paint? For night time reading of instruments? The radium paint made them glow in the dark, it must also have posed a danger to those who sprayed installed and dismantled the instruments?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-n ... d-18122594
Regards mark.

[wm]

The most basic precautions: glows, painter mask are sufficient. The hazard is mainly from ingestion, as it happened in the case of the Radium girls working for the criminal United States Radium Corporation.
A severely disturbing picture of one of the girls is here.

[Takao]

AFAIK, all nations used some form of radium-based paints for items that needed to "glow in the dark", German compasses for example.

[Trackhead M2]

Dear pp,
I live in Utica,IL. The next towns east and west are Ottawa, La Salle and Peru. There was a Westclox factory in Peru that made radium coated clocks that glowed in the dark. The company closed the plant in the 1970's. A lot of the fixtures and furniture wound up in homes and schools in the area. A higher rate of cancer followed. There is a documentary Radioactive City about it made in the 1980's. You need to have your prospective home checked for radiation prior to purchase or the banks won't lend money. The documentary shows the workers playing with the radium paint. The ladies used it as finger nail polish and lip color. There is a guy shown having painted himself a glow in the dark smile. If there is a ground water issue near the aircraft graveyard I wouldn't be surprised.
Strike Swiftly,
TH-M2

[wm]

This is simply unbelievable. I think something like this would impossible even in the communist Poland at that time. The people responsible are simply murderers.

Anyway I think the film is called "Radium City":

[ChristopherPerrien]

Well, incidentally bad as radium might have been/is if eaten/absorbed, I am not going to get rid of my grand-fathers watch. It still glows in the dark. Must be 80 years old at least.

Before radium, there was also Uranium Glass; another product liability lawsuit there, I'm sure, along with carnival X-ray machines.

[wm]

I think this is a very sensible attitude. Radiation is not some kind of monster waiting to devour people. Basic knowledge and a few simple precautions are all you need to be perfectly save.

[Takao]

Christopher,

Radium-226 has a half-life of about 1,600 years. so, I don't think your grandfather's watch will be going dim anytime in the near future...or the futures of your great-great-great-great-great-great grandkids.

[Baltasar]

AFAIK, all nations used some form of radium-based paints for items that needed to "glow in the dark", German compasses for example.

Actually, quite a lot of instruments, particularily flight instruments "glow in the dark". A colleague of mine has worked on PA-200, probably better known as Tornado. Those instruments glowed in the dark as well. Not sure if the instruments of the "new" Fighter 90 / Typhoon / Eurofighter are glowing.

[panzerplatten]

Photoluminescience, and l.e.d, light emitting diodes, are alternative forms these days, for instruments,
As opposed to the still radium based compounds,

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium_illumination
Mark.

[Baltasar]

LED aren't alternatives, because they are power driven and can stop working. While electrical power is not really an issue for aircraft, it doesn't help to have to generate yet another voltage for them either.

[panzerplatten]

Nevertheless they are still used in nearly all modern aircraft, cockpit and instrument brow lights .and are available now in kits to convert older aircraft incandescent bulbs. They are far more energy efficient and use less power, although I take your point balstar what happens in a power failure! Seeing that we are moving away from analog and going more digital with instruments the basic instrumentation no doubt will still have to be analog.
Regards mark.

[Baltasar]

Seeing modern cockpits, I do not recognize many analog instruments, only twice the number of digital instruments, which are meant as fail saves (= battery powered). Even an old compass is hard to find in a modern aircraft, let alone an attitude indicator or somesuch. For modern passenger aircraft, you'd rather need a computer specialist than a pilot and this is becoming more and more true for helicopters as well.

[panzerplatten]

Indeed, having seen inside a sikorsky S92 cockpit recently it was like a spac ship compared to the S62 sikorsky rescue helicopters its replacing here, complete digital big backlit LCD screens, compared to the rows of analog dials of the older model.
Mark

[Baltasar]

I had a look at the EC-130 cockpit and an old UH-1D cockpit. Looked as if these cockpits had nothing whatsoever in common. Since they say that flight safety is paramount, I wonder where the safeties are in those all-glass-cockpits.