Radium Instruments - Your input wanted.

[Mike Schneider]

After collecting WWII cockpit instruments for the last several years, it has come to my wifes attention, (through my big mouth), that the reason they these needles and numbers glow in the dark is due to a small amount of radioactive material in the paint called "radium." Well of course she freaked and now not only wants them out of the office where I keep them on display, but out of the house. I have done a good bit of web searching on the subject, (so has she) and basically all I can come up with is to be cautious if restoring these instruments, (gloves, and face mask) but if sealed with no cracked glass, the danger is nil. I know there are many relic and restorers out here, please let me have your 2 cents. Is my collection destined for a metal storage container in the garage? Worse yet headed for another state? Or do I pick my battles and argue for the 172SP down the road and give this round to her?

Thanks in Advance!

Mr. Don't wanna glow in the dark....

[Cvairwerks]

As long as the instrument case is ok and the glass good and has a decent seal, then there is really no problem with them. Where the problem comes up is trying to either reapply the radium or remove it from the instrument face. The dust and particles tend to hang around in the air for a long time and will drift upon the slightest breeze.

[Tony]

Throw her out.

More space for the collection then, and a larger safe zone.

No, don't thank me, anything for a fellow enthusiast

[Ollie]

You'll be fine as long as you don't lick the needles!

[tom d. friedman]

i have near 50 instruments, & a geiger counter that i tinkered with over them & they barely moved the needle. as long as you don't mess with them, open them, etc, no real risk. otherwise gloves respirator etc definetely a must. radium also gets crusty when it deteriorates, & it is especially advisable not mess with it in that case. as curios, & collectables they are fine on your shelf to enjoy. your cell phone, tv, & microwave spit out more radiation than your ww 2 instruments. not to mention, look at all the world reknowned pilots that sat in front of panels daily for hours & decades flying with no bad affects, such as doolittle, yeager, tibbetts etc. these guys & many more lived to their way upper years before passing, or continue to do so. regards, tom

[O.P.]

Hi Mike!

Cvairwerks is right. Anddddd,
From my experience, nuc submarines, weapons handling, ect, If you want to make a nuc officer or an engineering labrotory technician blow a gasket instantly, mention radium. Like CV said, it will get everywhere and contaminate everything extremely fast. And since you probably don't have a set of anti C's and an EAB or gas mask, you are one hundred percent going to ingest the stuff. The radium in those gages might be ok for now, but it won't be that way forever. Opening the gages for any reason would be a big mistake. Contaminating yourself and your workshop is something I don't think the county hazmat team could clean up. They'd have to get the guys from the nearest nuc power plant or the military to clean it up.

If you're a 30+ year old man, getting a dose from the stuff probably isn't that big of a deal. But it's a huge deal to any impregnatable women and it's even a bigger deal to any small children.

If you want to keep the stuff, get one of those rubbermaid storage boxes with the sealing lid. Put the gages in big ziplock freezer bags, tape the crap outta the bags, put the bags in the rubbermaid box, put the box in another bag, tape the crap outta it, and put it in the storage shed buried under something else. Orr, I think I read somewhere that there is a company that can restore the instruments and remove the radium.
Otherwise, I'd give em to the fire department or somebody to get rid of, do anonymously, so they don't want to check out your house.

Sorry dude, I know it seems like I'm going overboard, but if I had a wife and a couple of kids, those things would not be within 30 miles of me. The SP is definitely a cool thing to hold out for!

[HarvardIV]

Yeah O.P.

I think it should be handled w/ the similar level of caution as mecury. Nasty, especially over time. Also, wondering of the radiation emmitted from radium could penetrate through the glass of the instruments?

[JDK]

I had to research this one recently. Here are some facts.

The RAF Museum alowed us 15 min inside the Supermarine Stranraer, because of perceeved radiation risk - despite the fact the a/c has NO instraments fitted anymore.

The curator of aircraft was happy to sit in the a/c while we did out photos - he was in it for 3/4 hour at least. IIRC he had a radiation badge.

We were not alowed inside the Supermarine Seagull V at all, but we could take pics through the open window off a ladder.

The Canadian Aviation Museum has an instrument store - they are on open racking with a radiation hazard warning posted.

There was a hoo-ha in the UK a year or so ago - see www.24hourmuseum.co.uk, search 'radium'

My opinion:
There's a lot of over-reaction these days, and there's a load of W.W.II aircrew still with us, but I wouldn't go near a W.W.II era instrament with a cracked glass for all the tea in China.

If I were you, I'd contact the nearest national level aviation museum and ask their advice. It's free, it's what they are there for. If you have to dispose of them, PLEASE get it done properly.

Hope this helps.

[HarvardIV]

Hi James;

I've heard the FEDs in Britian are especially jumpy.. True?

Chris

[haroldmulder]

I am involved with the Y2-K Spitfire Project and about 2-3 years ago these instruments came to haunt us. In Canada the goverment has come out with new rules and regulations on Radiation exposure. Essentially it was directed at children but has come to encompass us all. The rules that came down were that Children could not be exposed to anything over twice background radiation levels. Here in Comox that I believe was around 10milli-sieverts(SP?) Any way the majority of our instruments were anywhere from 20-40ms. We had a steel cabinent 36"W by 18"D by 72"H filled with instrument about 250. The Radiation people from Ottawa were visiting all the Military Musuems to inspect them and they told us to move them out of our restoration Hangar. They would not allow anyone with in 8ft of the cabinet. I later learned that our Aircadet system had to re instrument some of the Tow planes and gliders due to the Radium instruments. The Rads people also told us based on the Instrument panel layout for our Spitfire that they anticipated that a pilot would only be able to fly the aircraft for 10 hrs per year before he went over the exposure limit. Now I realize that we still have a lot of people around who flew them during the war. Most of the people I have talked to admint that if the instrument is sealed then your risk level is quite low. However the science has become better over the years. How many people have 20 years later found they were sick from stuff that when they were working with it was considered quite normal. I personnally would not have any instruments near where children could come into contact with them. One last note if you have an instrument that is not sealed or open and has Radium paint BAG IT IN AT LEAST TWO SEALED PLASTIC BAGS and to be safe I would look for an approved agency to dispose of it. Or get the instrument to a qualified shop to be cleaned and repaired. For interest as of 2 years ago there was only one company Wright Instruments of Toronto that was legally allowed to clean these instruments in Canda, at least the only company I could find.

HH Mulder
Y2-K Spitfire

[O.P.]

Yeah O.P.

I think it should be handled w/ the similar level of caution as mecury. Nasty, especially over time. Also, wondering of the radiation emmitted from radium could penetrate through the glass of the instruments?

It can. I know on the boat no one was allowed to wear radium dialed watches. It wasn't necessarily because of contamination issues, it was because it would set off the radiation monitoring instruments in the engine room.

I don't think the radiation emitted from a radium dial is going to hurt anyone. Ingesting radium is goona do a whole lotta bad stuff to people though. Radium dialed instruments are real old. I might be off base here, but, from what I understand, the paint the radium is suspended in doesn't just flake away (which is bad enough), it disolves into a light powder. Maybe thats from the radium, who knows?

I know Ollie meant the "Licking" comment in jest, (I'm not trying to get on you dude, I'm using that to make a point, sorry), but thats what 5 year old kids do, lick the pretty color. I read of an incident in Brazil a couple of years ago. All of these poor ghetto kids and their parents, started showing up with all kinds of exotic stuff wrong with them. It turns out that the local hospital sh*tcanned two ancient xray machines in the local dump. All of the kids had alotta fun playing with the pretty blue powder. It had radium in it. Everyone was showing up with Lymph node this and Pancreus that. Thats an extreme example, but it doesn't take much.

That stuff is bad all the way around.

I'm sorry I'm being a downer and the killjoy. I know a very tiny bit about radioactive contamination and I wouldn't feel right if this thread got blown off without me saying something.

Dude, store the instruments safely, then send them one at a time to be restored safely.

Sorry again, I'll go back to my normally happy self,
Orvis

[Mike Schneider]

I sincerely thank all who have weighed in on this. No cracked, damaged, or faceless instruments here and they have always been out of reach of little hands, but since last week they have been in the garage and they will be departing my property soon for storage out of state. This seems to be the safest course of action even though we have had a wide range of responses here.

Hell, I could put a F4U-1A cockpit together with my collection, wonder if the ebay folks buying these items know what they are buying.

Thanks again guys.

Mike

[HarvardIV]

Hi O.P.

Two schools of thought here: It's not bad if handled normally is one, and causing goofy environmentalists to overreact; resulting in ridiculous gov't intervention (Not a favorite in the U.S., actually hated).

The other school of thought, it actually is dangerous, ie puts out more radiation than a day outside, and resulting legitimate safety measures.

Which one it really is, I don't know. I'll have to do my own homework on it.

Chris

[Chris Brame]

...then what about wreck sites? I've seen a lot of pictures of dial faces that have turned up from some crash that are being handled; are those even more dangerous?

[HarvardIV]

Don't know, but I'll do some investigating..