Getting away from Fiestaware

[VERNIG.PETER@FORUM.VA.GOV]

The fiiestaware thread has been interesting but I'd like to intro-
duce a variation.  First, if anybody has a spare piece, I'd be
interested.  I have a green/yellow glass piece and green ceramic
both of which are radioactive.  There was a good article 3 or 4 years
back in the HP Journal regarding this.  They found that cooking
maybe storing, acidic foods could leach out uranium.
 
Now to get away.  I investigated a concern about walls being radio-
active at another facility in this state.  An employee brought his
prospecting scintillation counter to work and decided that the two
walls of the waste water control building were "hot".  The management
managed to get a National Guard AN/PDR-27 survey meter [GM thick wall
& thin end window mounted in tandem] and the results were equivocal.
I had a low energy scintillation probe with SCA, not unfortunately
calibrated for the situation specifically, but a low energy window for
C-14/ S-35 was set up.
 
I was half expecting that I would find nothing or that there was a short
in the meter that started the furor.  I found that all of the walls had
slightly elevated levels and my system closely matched that of the pros-
pecting unit in that the two "hot" walls read just about twice background.
Six inches of seperation eliminated any readings above background.
 
The tiles in question were clay, reportedly a local product and were
shaped like cinder blocks with a glazed side facing in.  They were tan
in color.
 
With the instrumentation I had I could not say definitively what
made the bricks radioactive but I assume it was uranium or thorium and
daughters.  I recommended radon testing and dosimetry for the few people
asigned to the building.  My reasoning on the dosimetry was that since
I hadn't been able to possitively ID the material it would be a good 
idea and it would reasure those people assigned to work in the building
who now knew the walls were radioactive.  I was never able to get any feed
back.  I never found out if my advice was followed nor whether the bricks
were ever analysed in any manner.
 
Peter G. Vernig, VA Medical Center, Denver vernig.peter@forum.va.gov