Re: Revigorator

[JMUCKERHEIDE@delphi.com]

Tom,
> 
> I lived in San Francisco in the early 70's and my apartment mates and I
> also owned a Radiuim Revigorator.  We never scoped it out with a meter, but
> we assumed that there was a small chunck of radium in the unit somewhere
> (near the spiggot maybe?).  The idea was that of the Radithor--drink
> irradiated water, probably _hot_ water, and it would cure all of your ills,
> keep you young and prevent disease.  

Its not really the same. Each bottle of Radithor contained about 1 uCi Ra-226
and 1 uCi Ra-228. The radium replaced calcium in bone. Eben Byers drank
several bottles a day, accumulating a dose in the range 1000 Rad, alpha to
bone (QF=10? 20?, 10,000 rem; 20,000 rem?) in about 3 years. (Others who
accumulated such doses and far more over longer times had much higher
thresholds, with longer latencies; the threshold for all radium ingestion
populations is about 1000 Rad, with about 70 cases in the population of about
2700 followed by the Argonne Center for Human Radiobiology, many of which were 
symptom-selected, not epidemiologically significant, with doses beyond 50,000
Rad. The epidemiologically valid cases indicated a constant 25-30% excess
cancer rate at all doses from 1,000-80,000 Rads, though latency periods
increased with decreasing dose.) 

The Revigator released radon into the water in a manner that would seem likely 
to produce less radon and short-lived daughter radioactivity in the water than 
would be present in many natural Ra/Rn/daughter sources (which have been
demonstrated to result in no adverse health effects). This would certainly be
trivial compared to Radithor, with an entirely different radiological
significance. (The radon emanations in the Radithor case were from the
individual's own bones, not some crockery :-) 

>I suspect a number of folks who used
> these units heavily didn't fare well later in life.....  

Do you have any info on the radon concentrations/doses achieved with these
units? What is the comparison with high background area sources? What
radiation health effects data would support this conclusion? There are very
many of the radium ingestion cases from 1910-1930 still alive (though this
embarrassing data has been terminated by the Feds eliminating funding for the
Center for Human Radiobiology which was committed in 1970 to follow this
population for life). Some limited effort is being made to get death
certificate data from SS number scans (relatively inexpensive) to check
mortality data. We'll be hearing more in the next few months, including Robley 
Evans' participation. A report of the program completed in late 1993 is still
not released by DOE (even though it may largely follow the obfuscation
standard tat the program was achieving in the '70s and early '80s). 

>I walked by the
> thing, filled with dried flowers and kept on the landing of the stairwell,
> several times each day for several years and apparently suffered no ill
> effects.  

Someone working in a granite building wouldn't be surprized :-)

>Any other reports on the
> Radiuim Revigorator would be appreciated.
> 
> Tom Shelley
> 
Thanks.

Regards, Jim Muckerheide