Re: Getting away from Fiestaware

[Schoenhofer <schoenho@via.at>]

At 12:48 07.06.1996 -0500, you wrote:
>.................................
>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
>
>=====================================================================

Peter,

You mention that the wall read two times background - what background?
Background from outdoors, a place far away from any wall or from other
walls? I donīt know any wall, which would show a "zero" background. In any
soil - also in clay - you have traces of uranium, thorium and their decay
products. The tiles were not necessarily responsible for the "elevated"
reading, but it might have been the structure behind the tiles. 

Most countries have legislation or at least standards for radioactivity in
walls as well as exhalation of radon. Is there nothing like this in the USA?

Franz Schoenhofer
Federal Institute for Food Control and Research
Radiochemistry and Radioactivity in Food
Vienna, Austria
Schoenhofer
Habichergasse 31/7
A-1160 Wien
Tel./Fax:	+43-1-4955308
Tel.:		+43-664-3380333
e-mail:		schoenho@via.at