Radon Found In Countertops

Popular granite countertops may emit radon at dangerous levels. Harry Smith discusses ways to test countertops with an expert in radiation testing.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• harry
• smith
• granite
• countertops
• radon
• radiation

[replacementcounters]

Customers concerned with this should visit the Marble Institute of America's Site or the EPA website

[DODICKxMILE]

Hey, this Marble Institute of America sounds fair and true. Ya'll should check it out before saying and speculating some fake radon crap. We all should be dead by now if granite emmits radon so much.

[puncheex]

@n1iex: Quartz countertop? Hmmm. If it is quarried, it would probably be roughly the same as the granite; that is, as near harmless as can be imagined.  Granite is about 33% quartz.

[puncheex]

... Last but not least, radon222 is an alpha emitter, like plutonium and uranium. That sounds awful, but alphas are not dangerous outside; an inch of air, a sheet of paper, or the layer of dead skin cells everyone has on the outside is enough to shield the body. In uranium, the problem is that the dust can get into the lungs where it is not shielded, but as said above, radon is an inert gas. It doesn't chemically join anything. It may be inhaled, but it is then exhaled.

[puncheex]

... perhaps .2 uSv per day. Consulting xkcd(.)com/radiation, this dose is about 2/3rds of what living 50 miles from a coal-fired power plant gives you. Normal daily background radiation is 10 uSv. Besides, this radiation source is an inert gas - it doesn't lodge in the lungs, it doesn't "stick" to you. It is flushed out or diluted with any sort of ventilation system, such as an open window. It doesn't accumulate; a quantity of it disappears through disintegration within 40 days.

[puncheex]

1 picocurie is about .04 becquerel, per liter of air. A becquerel is a single nucleus disintegration per second, so 100 picocuries is a 4 disintegrations per liter of air per second. That is an immensely small amount of radiation, especially for as active a source as radon222 is; it has a half life of 4 days. Now, it is difficult to convert becquerels into equivalent effective dosages. There are lots of considerations, but making a bunch of assumptions you could make this equivalent to ...

[n1iex]

HOW ABOUT QUATZ COUNTERTOPS ??

[solarhawk77]

Does granite emit Radon? yes. Does the concrete in your basement? yes. Radon is a noble gas, and doesn't react chemically to really anything. Also, being a gas, it doesn't exactly collect in your lungs, it's simply breathed out again. This makes it very hard to measure itself. What's typically measured is the daughter nuclides, such as Pb-214 (lead), being one of the longer half-life of the series of it's daughters, at 26.8 minutes. Stanley their "expert" is spreading fear, and wants to profit.

[thepianolover4ever]

harry is so awkward!

[Sweeper5]

@saynotodarwin Oh my god, you're right! I'll bet it's a conspiracy to kill women, some kind of plot by a granite-crazed man supremacist! hahaahha You fucking loon.

[Zoidberg227]

Let me clear some things up for you pregnant women out there, since this liar is obfuscating things. NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO, YOU CAN'T GET AWAY FROM RADIATION. This little piece puts no significance or perspective behind the readings they show. To put things into perspective, the human body has about 0.1 microcuries of naturally occurring potassium-40. A picocurie is one million times SMALLER than a microcurie. Your own body is 22700 times more radioactive than the first sample.

[y2knoproblem]

CMT labs is snake oil, fear mongering.