Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
The americium-241 in your smoke detector
Photoelectrics are better at sensing a smoldering fire; ionizing detectors are much better at a blaze
By now we’d all glow in the dark like big fireflies.
Dear Matthew Alice: Is it true that the smoke detector, installed by the builders of my condo in '79, has a radioactive element in it? If so, is it strong enough to be harmful in the corner of my bedroom? Yes, I know — why am I asking now, after 15 years! — Bill Cromwell, Mission Valley
If there were any radiation danger from ionization-type smoke detectors. Bill, by now we’d all glow in the dark like big fireflies. And photoelectric-style devices contain no radioactive elements. So no matter which type you have, your health has suffered more from 15 years of worry than from any leaky rays. An ionizing detector has a pill-sized, shielded bit of americium-241, which “ionizes” the air inside the device, completing an electrical circuit. Smoke particles disrupt the connection and trigger the alarm. (In photoelectrics, the smoke scatters a light beam.) And here it comes, the obligatory goofy-but-eye-opening comparison apparently required in every radiation story. If you snuggled under the covers with your ionizing alarm every night for a year, you’d be exposed to a tenth of the radiation dose (0.5 milligram) you’d receive on a round-trip plane flight from New York to L.A., according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. All consumer products contribute only 3 percent to the average person’s annual radiation exposure.
Consumers Union poked and pummeled ionizing detectors and imagined every possible ugly scenario while preparing their smoke-detector safety story for the January 1977 issue of Consumer Reports. As you might expect, they say your risk from fire is real; your risk from smoke detectors is virtually nonexistent, assuming you don’t eat one or stick the pellet up your nose. (A few years ago, a creative Canadian decided to commit suicide by cooking the radiation pellets from two smoke alarms in a kettle of onion soup. He ate a bowl or two each week for a month. If it eventually kills him, it could take years. Hope he doesn’t change his mind in the meantime.)
A few more detector tips. The photoelectrics are better at sensing a smoldering fire (the cigarette-in-the-sofa-cushions type); ionizing detectors are much better at sensing a blaze that emits little or no smoke. CU recommends you put both types in some rooms. And don’t throw a conked-out ionizing detector in the trash. It’s against the law. Mail it back to the manufacturer.
Here's something you might be interested in.
The americium-241 in your smoke detector
Photoelectrics are better at sensing a smoldering fire; ionizing detectors are much better at a blaze
The americium-241 in your smoke detector
Photoelectrics are better at sensing a smoldering fire; ionizing detectors are much better at a blaze
By now we’d all glow in the dark like big fireflies.
Dear Matthew Alice: Is it true that the smoke detector, installed by the builders of my condo in '79, has a radioactive element in it? If so, is it strong enough to be harmful in the corner of my bedroom? Yes, I know — why am I asking now, after 15 years! — Bill Cromwell, Mission Valley
If there were any radiation danger from ionization-type smoke detectors. Bill, by now we’d all glow in the dark like big fireflies. And photoelectric-style devices contain no radioactive elements. So no matter which type you have, your health has suffered more from 15 years of worry than from any leaky rays. An ionizing detector has a pill-sized, shielded bit of americium-241, which “ionizes” the air inside the device, completing an electrical circuit. Smoke particles disrupt the connection and trigger the alarm. (In photoelectrics, the smoke scatters a light beam.) And here it comes, the obligatory goofy-but-eye-opening comparison apparently required in every radiation story. If you snuggled under the covers with your ionizing alarm every night for a year, you’d be exposed to a tenth of the radiation dose (0.5 milligram) you’d receive on a round-trip plane flight from New York to L.A., according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. All consumer products contribute only 3 percent to the average person’s annual radiation exposure.
Consumers Union poked and pummeled ionizing detectors and imagined every possible ugly scenario while preparing their smoke-detector safety story for the January 1977 issue of Consumer Reports. As you might expect, they say your risk from fire is real; your risk from smoke detectors is virtually nonexistent, assuming you don’t eat one or stick the pellet up your nose. (A few years ago, a creative Canadian decided to commit suicide by cooking the radiation pellets from two smoke alarms in a kettle of onion soup. He ate a bowl or two each week for a month. If it eventually kills him, it could take years. Hope he doesn’t change his mind in the meantime.)
A few more detector tips. The photoelectrics are better at sensing a smoldering fire (the cigarette-in-the-sofa-cushions type); ionizing detectors are much better at sensing a blaze that emits little or no smoke. CU recommends you put both types in some rooms. And don’t throw a conked-out ionizing detector in the trash. It’s against the law. Mail it back to the manufacturer.
Comments