[ RadSafe ] What fertilizer - specifically????

[Stewart Farber]

Many years ago I was at my local Cosco wholesale club. They had a palette 
full of KCl ice melt a few meters from the checkout lines. These were 15 kg 
bags stacked high on a palette  [perhaps  90 bags in total].  I took a photo 
of a woman with a baby in the carriage, standing next to the palette of KCl. 
Do the math. As with No Salt this ice melt contains K-40 at  about 17,000 
Bq/kg [460,000 pCi/kg KCl].

I brought a micro-R meter and placed it against the stack of Na free ice 
melt at Costco to see what kind of exposure rate was observed. If memory 
serves, it was on the order of 2 micro-Sv/hr  [ 0.2 mR/hr].

Another common material with environmental radioactivity is wood ash. From 
the typical wood ash the K-40 activity is 3,700 Bq/kg [100,000 pCi/kg]. 
People typically take woodash from their home fireplaces and spread it on 
their gardens.  Ash spread on fields is also done on a commercial basis with 
wood ash from wood burning power plants. A 50 MWe wood burning power plant 
generates about 3,000 m^3 meters of woodash per year. This woodash is mixed 
with manure and sold to organic food production farms in NE Vermont for 
example. Rather ironic.


Stewart Farber, MS Public Health
Farber Medical Solutions, LLC

[203] 441-8433 [o]

-----Original Message----- 
From: Mercado, Donald Paul. (ARC-QH)[CONSOLIDATED SAFETY SERVICES INC]
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2012 11:34 AM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
Subject: Re: [ RadSafe ] What fertilizer - specifically????

I know you've probably thought of these, but I'll be redundant,

Radium & H3 dials, exit signs, welding rods, Cloisonné jewelry, a thyroid 
cancer patient (really exciting if you have a microR meter with a speaker), 
refractory bricks, water scale, a banana.....

Someone came in here last week with a H3 glow stick from Canada that was 
MUCH brighter than any exit sign tube I've ever seen, said it was meant for 
camping.


-----Original Message-----
From: radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu 
[mailto:radsafe-bounces at health.phys.iit.edu] On Behalf Of Ted de Castro
Sent: Monday, November 05, 2012 8:18 AM
To: The International Radiation Protection (Health Physics) Mailing List
Subject: [ RadSafe ] What fertilizer - specifically????

I need to give a general radiation talk and want to include samples of
radiation around us ....

I have my Fiestaware, lamp mantel, sand from the beach in Kerala India,
smoke detector sources, DU, NoSalt and thought maybe a small bag of
fertilizer would go well.

Any specific suggestions to make my quest quicker - and yeah yeah I know
- not in a crowded store with lots of customers and volume full up.

Thanks for your help.
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