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Re: Potassium Iodide
At 11:39 AM 12/19/2002 -0500, Susan L Gawarecki wrote:
>As I recall, potassium chloride is used as an example of natural
>radioactivity because of the K-40. I expect there would be a similar
>instrument response to KI. So, will people take a radioactive pill to
>protect them from "deadly" radiation? Publicize this fact just right,
>and you could crash the fear-based KI-pill market.
Dear Dr. Gawarecki,
I did a short-term count of a bottle of 200 65mg KI tablets through the
poly?ethelene? bottle wall with the bottom of the bottle covering the
pancake G-M tube (1-inch approx diameter mica window) and noticed POSSIBLY
an increase in 3µR/h increase over background...but the other two
background counts measured about 3-4µR/h lower than my long-term background
average in this location. AND we're talking 14µR/h as my assumed background
at home nestled into the decomposed granite hillside and about 10µR/h at my
10th-floor office.
So what increase in radioactivity are you expecting from KI? I did not want
to open the sealed bottle as it's damp here and I'd rather not do that. So
if it's only alpha and beta, I suspect that the bottle may have shielded
the meter.
And, in case you scoff at an Aware Electronics RM-70 as a totally useless
toy (I know some on this list do not like Aware due to their marketing
slant) please look at the specs--note I have the middle unit.
http://www.aw-el.com/specs.htm
Oh, and I've never felt better about radiation since I've been able to
measure it. I'm going for a chest x-ray and intend to bring the
monitor--and no, I'm not worried about the dosage from a chest x-ray, I
just like to put things into perspective. It was scary last Monday when I
had an x-ray (w/o monitor) and the technician could not tell me the dosage
other than it was "low and safe" I told her I knew that, I wanted numbers.
Cheers,
Richard
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