• Dionysus@leminal.space
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      3 months ago

      Glass vial, not bad, not great.

      Seriously though, those older chem sets had natural samples, so likely not enough to really do damage unless you used it as a jade stone or suppository.

  • mercano@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Natural uranium mostly emits alpha particles. It’s dangerous if you eat or inhale it, but the wood in the nightstand drawer is going to be enough to block them.

    • Rhaedas@fedia.io
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      3 months ago

      Paper and skin can stop alpha particles. Glass, plastic, or a little bit of metal can stop beta. It’s gamma that will get you, often because of what the gamma does through the material, knocking off new particles as it exits.

      The uranium in one of these kits probably had the same potency as the radium pendants you can buy now. It’s fine as long as it stays in its container and never gets inside your body.

  • InvalidName2@lemmy.zip
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    3 months ago

    Kind of reminds me of my step-mother. It’s not the lifetime of heavy chain smoking that caused/causes her to keep getting cancer and worsening respiratory illness. It’s the chemicals “they put in everything”. It’s “they used to put mercury in our vaccines”. It’s “all the drugs they make you take these days”. It’s blamed on everything else and the 60+ years of almost non-stop cigarette smoking just contributed but didn’t cause it.

    And, of course, plenty of common things besides cigarette smoke can cause cancer, so it’s not like I’m denying that. Just that Occam’s Razor being what it is, I’m going with the simplest and most obvious explanation that there’s evidence of to explain all the health issues.

    • The Picard Maneuver@piefed.world
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      3 months ago

      It’s such a common thing in medicine, mental health, weight loss, IT troubleshooting, etc. It’s not impossible that the answer is complex, but we always feel like we’re a special case and it can’t possibly be as simple as “eat less”, “get more sleep”, “turn it off and on again”.

    • Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      My dad recently got bladder cancer fortunately they are well off enough financially that they are able to pay for treatments, thank God!

      But I learned that the over 20 years of drinking was less likely to cause the bladder cancer than the fact that he smoked cigarettes. Belive it or not cigarettes have a higher risk of inducing bladder cancer whereas alcohol is more likely to destroy your liver and kidney directly.

      He was also exposed to a shit load of chemicals throughout his entire life.

      Cancer is a hell of a thing and I don’t wish it on anyone.

    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      This is the argument that cigarette companies used for a long time to avoid accountability. It wasn’t the fault of the cigarettes. It’s all those contributing factors.

      I saw a lot of that during lockdown. “She didn’t die from COVID! She died of pneumonia!” Wow, a lot of people are dying from pneumonia this year! That isn’t normal, is it?

      • Hueristic_Autistic@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        It’s denying the worst possible outcome of what’s right in front of them to stay positive. It’s a form of ignorance is bliss. Literally a boomer technique that’s able to be used but to us when things are so in front of us it’s hard to only give 1/10th of a fuck.

  • REDACTED@infosec.pub
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    3 months ago

    She has lived so long with uranium next to her for much of her life? This needs to be studied, maybe she’s onto something

  • taiyang@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Modded Minecraft ruined my mind because this reminded me of a time when opening a wooden chest full of plutonium gave me radiation poisoning and ruined my deathless playground. My mate picked it up after and then also immediately died. Stupid dragons and their stupid plutonium.

      • taiyang@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Enigmatica 2 Expert. A fun mix of mods produced a Fire and Ice Dragon that had treasure loot from Industrial Craft 2… you’re supposed to handle radioactive materials with proper safety gear. Who’d have thought? Lol

  • SnarkoPolo@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    “You kids today and your bike helmets. We played with radioactive isotopes, and it toughened us by god!”

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    3 months ago

    Realistically if it’s in a vile in a draw the wood and glass probably blocks most of the radiation. It probably won’t be that high purity if it’s from a 1940s toy set

  • Aniki@feddit.org
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    3 months ago

    fun fact: low doses of radiation are actually known to reduce cancer rates. there’s quite a bit of research into it.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis#Radiation

    In Taiwan, recycled radiocontaminated steel was inadvertently used in the construction of over 100 apartment buildings, causing the long-term exposure of 10,000 people. The average dose rate was 50 mSv/year and a subset of the population (1,000 people) received a total dose over 4,000 mSv over ten years. In the widely used linear no-threshold model used by regulatory bodies, the expected cancer deaths in this population would have been 302 with 70 caused by the extra ionizing radiation, with the remainder caused by natural background radiation. The observed cancer rate, though, was quite low at 7 cancer deaths when 232 would be predicted by the LNT model had they not been exposed to the radiation from the building materials. Ionizing radiation hormesis appears to be at work.

    • NM_Gringo@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      That was the one topic that always baked my noodle at DoE. In animal tests the low dose group consistently outlived the controls. I wanted to write papers on the topic but consistently got shot down. The upper tiers were worried about public perception of “radiation can be good” papers.

  • DupaCycki@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    So let me get this straight. Radiation causes cancer. But radiation also cures cancer. Do you guys seriously believe this shit?

    /s because I’ve written more obvious satire before, only to be interpreted seriously

    • dronarnia@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      When people need help after injuries from a knife, what happens? Surgeons go at them with little knives. What a scam.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      3 months ago

      The reason for this is a little bit of radiation damages your DNA causing the cells to go haywire, whereas a lot of radiation kills the cells outright.

      So if you get cancer, you blast the cancer cells with radiation to wipe them out. The radiation is targeted so you don’t wipe out healthy cells.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 months ago

      If you think this is obvious satire, then I have to wonder when was the last time you actually spoke to an average human person? There are people on this site who would unironically say something like that

    • bstix@feddit.dk
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      3 months ago

      I remember a website by some guy experimenting with terminal cancer in himself. He’d eat gold particles and microwave himself with a DIY device made from a microwave oven.

      It was several years ago, so I think we would have heard of he was successful.