Radioactivity in a diver's suit?

["Jim Otton" <jkotton@usgs.gov>]

David,

I am a environmnetal radionuclide specialist with the U.S. Geological

Survey.  In addition to oil and gas environmental problems, I work on NORM,

TENORM and the natural radiation background.

I am intrigued by your finding of radioactivity in a diver's suit. Many

modern diver's suits, as noted by one of your respondents, contain titanium,

but it is my undertsanding that this is usually in the form of a thin foil

interlaminated with Neoprene and other materials. If the thin foil consists

of pure titanium or titanium alloyed with other metal, it seems unlikely to

be a source of radioactivity.



However, titanium ores are often radioactive.  The sources of most titanium

in the U.S. are minerals in heavy mineral sands mined near the Atlantic and

Gulf Coast from Virginia around to Texas.  Heavy mineral sands also contain

minerals that carry both uranium and thorium, with thorium generally being

more common.  If the Neoprene were impregnated with a titanium-bearing heavy

mineral (such as rutile, ilmenite, or leucoxene), there could be significant

amounts of uranium or thorium-bearing minerals as impurities.  What

beneficial effect embedding titanium-bearing heavy mineral grains in

Neoprene would have escapes me and I think that it would be very misleading

to market this as Titanium-Neoprene.



Perhaps a gamma spectral scan for some of the uranium- or

thorium-strong-gamma-emitting daughters like Bi-214 or Tl-208 might provide

some clues.



Jim Otton