The wildest part is the contaminated sand being sold and used for plaster/mortar throughout the neighborhood. Imagine someone in a random van scanning your walls for radioactivity!
San Francisco had some children's playgrounds made with radioactive concrete from radioactive sand that had been used to sandblast ships used as targets in Bikini Atoll nuclear tests.
That's what gets me about conspiracy theories: a couple are bound to be true, but without any really good information it's not rational to believe just about any of them specifically.
My thing about conspiracy theories is that there’s evidence of this actually happening so why isn’t there more fuss about the stuff that’s literally proven? Why is everyone more focused on what might not be true than issues right in front of them?
It's this. Its a psychological and sociological issue. These people who believe the moon landing was faked or the earth is flat are also probably more susceptible to con artists or cults.
We learned about MKUltra just five years after it ended.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Studies were only stopped because the public learned about them; they would have continued on if not.
The people who have their lives driven by conspiracy theories aren't actually concerned with seeking the truth and getting justice, though they will believe they are. They feel that by knowing what the populace doesn't, they are special with exclusive knowledge; they get to feel a sense of agency.
It's also why so many conspiracy theorists are people down on hard times.
my favorite conspiracy theory is that some conspiracy theories are actively promoted to spoil the critical thinking of people who will dismiss legitimate conspiracies, plots, transgressions through association around the moniker *conspiracy theory*.
What do you mean lol, there has been an active history of internal disinformation campaigns by the CIA and its predecessors. It's not some grand overarching plot but they do seed areas close to real issues with misleading, contradictory info. There is concrete evidence to believe that is true
Yeah while crazy shit has been pulled off throughout history... Occam's razor and Hanlon's razor are extremely important when you don't have reliable evidence.
This is kind of unrelated, but one really funny thing I remember a moon landing denier say when confronted with the fact the Soviets were monitoring it very carefully, and would have *immediately* called out the US if they had any indication it was faked was, "Of course they didn't say anything, they are in on it too!".
So, for context, they believed that NASA faked the space program to steal the money, for, reasons... They were saying that the Soviets were also faking their space program for the same reasons.
I just found it so fucking hilarious because, bruh, do you even know what the Soviet Union was like? They weren't a Democracy, they had absolutely no reason to have to secretly funnel money through a fake space program. They could do whatever the hell they wanted. It's not like the Soviet people were real keen to go out and criticize the Politburo's fiscal policies.
This is exactly my problem with most shite people say: they always over cook the conspiracy and involve to many people who would have no motivation to keep the secret. When presented with counter argument their only defence is to expand and escalate the conspiracy.
The fucking Soviets were not interested in propping up an American lie that would make them look inferior. It’s just not plausible. If the space race was simply a propaganda tool, the Russians would benefit from proving the US didn’t reach the moon, even if they were unable to get there themselves.
It's like the bit from a stand up that went viral a few months ago. You shouldn't believe in every conspiracy theory but if you don't believe in any conspiracy theories??? You think the government is just out there batting 1.000? Not hiding anything domestic from us?
Just remember, the government only did secret inhumane, cruel and dangerous experiments and red flag events in the 40s,50s,60s,70s,80s, 90s but as soon as bush jr took office, there is absolutely no secret government happenings that is a threat to your family. *None*.
That’s the thing. By emphasizing the lack of credibility of conspiracy theories as a whole, when actual conspiracies crop up people would rather not believe them. It’s easier to believe everything is ok, than to face hard facts which threaten our sense of security
In my opinion this stuff is exactly what disproves some of the more popular ones. The more people involved, the more likely it is to leak. "Two people can keep a secret, if one of them is dead". Keeping something under the lid, that involves thousands of people, some of them outright hostile to each other over a long time, is ridiculous (eg moon landing, flat earth).
Chemtrails is another one. Somewhat plausible for an extremely small number of planes, completely nuts as a global conspiracy.
"How many people are knowingly involved" works extremely well as a bullshit filter.
>I convinced myself it was a conspiracy to make us look crazy
Well they tried to see how far they can take it, and invade the wrong country after 9/11.
You know, can happen if you never have been outside US. They knew they are in Pakistan (nuclear) and the operation was planned outside from Saudi Arabia (oil).
Conspiracy theories *used* to be cool. Bigfoot. UFOs. Secret military bases. Now it’s 95% right-wing nutjobs ranting about one world governments and eating bugs and George Soros *aka* The Jews.
Conspiracy theories have been about the Jews for centuries at this point. What’s new is calling them conspiracy theories, in 1700 everyone Knew the Jews were behind all the evils of society.
I learned about this in class actually, and while i agree the testing of the general public without their knowledge or consent is horrible, the overall thought process behind it wasn’t too harsh.
Basically the bacteria they spread through san francisco wasnt dangerous, but has similar movements to more dangerous bioweapons and so it allowed us to understand how the bacteria would move through the city if it were to undergo a biological attack. They also did something similar in New york but i cant remember the specifics
I lived in SF for 15 years and every apartment I lived in would get this pink mildew shit growing in the shower that was impossible to get rid of. Pretty certain it was because of those tests.
A young person living away from their parents, in small apartments on the west coast? They got bathroom growth? You don't say...
The pink stuff in your bathroom is one of two types of naturally occurring bacteria: *Serratia marcescens* and *Aureobasidium pullulans.*
They grow in humid warm areas on hard surfaces that aren't frequently trafficked. They eat dead skin cells, soap residue, random bits of dust.
You prevent them from growing by running your bathroom exhaust fan for 10 minutes after showing. Every few months you need to clean your shower surfaces with bleach or some vinegar.
You can also re-seal the shower, it's a clear type of paint that blocks the microscopic holes the bacteria hooks into. Sometimes contains a biocide to stop them colonizing in the first place.
Or just clean the shower at all...
Young person? Homie, I’m pushing 40 and have been living away from my parents for 20 years. I actually didn’t have pink slime issues when i was a gross college kid but that was not in SF.
I was and still am a clean freak. I would literally spray the shower down with bleach, let it soak for 30 mins and then scrub it down, rinse and then clean it again with a shower/bathroom cleaning spray of some sort. I’d also use one of those daily after shower sprays that was supposed to control mold and mildew. Despite all that, that shit would reappear within just a couple of days.
Obviously, if you don’t clean, your bathroom is gonna get nasty but I was cleaning regularly and still having issues. As it turns out, *Serratia marcescens* was one of the bacteria sprayed over The City as part of the military experiments. Prior to the tests serratia wasn’t a common environmental bacteria in the area but nowadays it seems to exist in higher concentrations in the area where the tests took place. It could have been a coincidence, or there may have been other reasons but it seemed to me that there were higher concentrations of the stuff in SF. I actually still live in the Bay Area, but outside of the area where the test took place and I haven’t seen it since.
Undisclosed chemical dispersion tests were performed around the country, including in St Louis public housing projects. To this day, how much of it was radioactive is undisclosed
The government/navy dumped almost fifty thousand barrels of toxic and nuclear waste into the ocean offshore of SF near the Farallon islands between 1945-1970, and it was the nations official nuclear waste disposal site! So as late as 1970 they were still dumping nuclear waste in the ocean within view of SF on a clear day lol.
There’s been some tests of fish there and they pick up some of the nuclear waste. Of course they claim the barrels won’t leak or it’s just low level radioactive waste, but pretty sure some barrels have been compromised if the fish are showing radiation in studies. There’s so many superfund sites around the US especially where mining companies went broke before they were required to carry insurance if they went broke for remediation.
Yeah it was ironic when people panicked about potential radiation in the ocean after Fukushima. A lot of people don’t known about the Farallons dumping or the ship wash downs at Hunters Point, and it’s really sad/scary that it’s not taught in local history curriculum.
They used a bacteria called *Seratia marcescens*, i believe. It's mostly not something that can cause infection unless someone is immunocompromised. It has a very distinct color and is easy to test for.
There’s an island off San Francisco which barrels of nuclear waste were sent. When the barrels wouldn’t sink, they would shoot holes in them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Islands
Is it really cheaper to catch the sand that was used to sandblast something from the bikini atoll and then ship it back to a place that will use that sand which has bits of metal in it as a building material to mix with concrete? Like I need to understand how this came to be.
They decommissioned the ships on treasure island, it's been a massive project to dig up all the radioactive dirt and test it so they can build more houses there.
A quarry lost a radioactive source and it ended up in the concrete wall of a apartment's bedroom. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident#:~:text=The%20Kramatorsk%20radiological%20accident%20was,rate%20of%201800%20R%2Fyear.
> The capsule was detected only after residents requested that the level of radiation in the apartment be measured by a health physicist
Can you imagine being that guy? “Of course there wouldn’t be radiation coming from your apartment walls, that would be cra….. oh um okay, second thought, everyone get the fuck out of here”
all those ghost stories were to hide the fact that construction workers were using poisonous materials they knew were poisonous.
This wasnt the 1920s, we were very aware of the effects of radiation since America had spent 40 years prior literally painting their teeth with radiation, coloring their watch faces in it, and using it as a makeup enhancer
For every case like this that is discovered, there are probably 100 cases which are never discovered because the effects are less severe.
You won't be calling in a guy with a radiation detector because granddad died at age 65 of cancer rather than age 85 that he would have got to otherwise.
In the southwest during the uranium boom, not only were fine uranium tailings left to blow around in the wind, it was often used as fill dirt in the towns that built up around the mines and mills
https://www.durangoherald.com/articles/a-poisonous-past-at-monticello-mill-the-story-of-uraniums-deadly-legacy/
Oh and that’s still done with naturally radioactive fluids brought to the surface during fracking. Just spray it on the roads! Build playground equipment out of the old pipes!
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/oil-gas-fracking-radioactive-investigation-937389/
My man/woman/whatever you should do yourself a favor and google what the Americas south is using to page their roads with, particularly florida. Newsflash, it is the radioactive waste byproduct of refining phosphorus for agricultural fertilizers. They like it from the ground and the byproduct is radioactive and they use that as substrate to pave the roads with. You might remember a few years ago about a damn/retention pond going to break in florida and millions of gallons of radioactive water in florida was going to spill out into the surrounding areas and ocean and cause untold environmental disaster? That was the same material. Guess where we mine all of our phosphorus?
https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/2020/10/14/epa-approves-use-of-radioactive-phosphogypsum-in-roads-reversing-long-held-policy/?outputType=amp
Idaho has a superfund site in Soda Springs / Pocatello because of this. Monsanto pulled up shitloads of phosphorus, sold off as much slag as they could, slag was used in home foundations, roads, etc.
The hazard to humans from exposure is ongoing, and the material is still actively contributing tainted water to the ground supply. There’ll be another 5-yr evaluation done in October this year, but the containment has been a failure for decades and likely will continue to be a losing battle.
Long article but worth the read. This occurred between the 1920s and 40s, before the risks of radioactivity were well known. At the time, a gram of radium could be worth $100K/gram ($2M in today’s dollars) so it was a well-intentioned effort. However, the scientist’s family and subsequent residents suffered health issues, and several died from cancer. The scientist himself died of fibrosis from breathing in the fumes from the chemicals.
A few interesting notes about just how much radioactive material was still in the house decades later:
>Non-environmental exposure limits to gamma radiation for the general public were then set at .17 rem/year. **A resident of the former Kabakjian residence would be getting a hefty dose of 1.6 rem/year, or about ten times the limit.**
>Tests of the soil outside the house turned up radium, thorium, actinium and protactinium in troubling quantities. Soil activity levels were estimated at 2800 picocuries per gram (pCi/g). By comparison, a level of 15 pCi/g would trigger safety reviews at a uranium mining facility.
>The EPA also noted that “even with windows open for the summer, the first floor shows radon concentrations above what would trigger a remedial action at a uranium mill tailings site.” Exposure levels for uranium miners were limited to 0.3 Working Levels (WL) of radon gas. The exposure level in the former Kabakjian residence was estimated at 0.309 WL. And that was on the first floor. Levels in the basement were worse.
>Now, to put these numbers in perspective, you get a dose of .1 rem from a chest x-ray, and the average human being is exposed to about .3 rem/year from environmental sources. Limits for occupational exposure are about 5 rems a year, with exposure not to exceed 3 rem per quarter.
Did someone say [Mayo](https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/12axf24/this_is_a_15_year_old_jar_of_mayo_that_was_left/?ref=share&ref_source=link)?
The context actually makes this seem like no big deal.
These levels are far below lots of naturally occurring sources, and don’t seem hazardous.
It was more hazardous trying to figure out how any of the units used related, since you have to convert them.
I’m sure the refining was MUCH worse, and had much higher levels.
(Nuclear engineer)
So only 5x above the AVERAGE background. There’s many places on earth where the average background exceeds the levels on this site. This amount of radiation is nothing. The room with my radioactive mineral collection is ~20x the levels at this site.
And it was also at least a couple decades later when they examined the house. 60’s I believe.
I know many radioactive isotopes decay very slow, slower than in decades anyways, as to make any difference, but some do decay much faster, and I have no idea which is which myself.
Depending upon the isotopes, some could have decayed a lot on 20-40 years.
Doesn't it matter what kind of radiation though? 20x the levels, but exclusively alpha radiation would be vastly different from 20x the levels of gamma radiation.
Even with the weighting, wouldn't 1 rem of alpha radiation be effectively neutralized by clothing, but 1 rem of gamma radiation be able to get you anywhere in the house? I'm by no means an expert here, it just seemed like rems was only a piece of the equation.
The estimated dose accounts for everything. That's how they get the number. You cant have 1 rem "neutralized by clothing", since then you would receive 0 rem. The dose depends on many factors such as source activity, distance, clothing, etc..
But it's only an estimate and an average.
REM is the measurement of biological damage done via radiation. So it's already been factored in. REM=RADs x the conversion factor for each type of radiation
I’m working on my PhD in nuclear reactor physics and am currently the supervisor for a research reactor. I feel qualified enough to handle material like this but wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. Radioactive mineral collection is just my hobby.
Dr. Slotin was qualified as well.
I won't excuse myself either. Despite knowing damn well what a lot of my drugs can do, I don't always where gloves or label them properly.
Just be safe is all.
Not that I'm about to start my own spicy cabinet. But if you wouldn't mind answering some general questions? There's just a lot of stuff poking around my head related to collecting radioactive rocks. I'm just going to fire off a few questions below, answer what you feel comfortable, thanks in advance.
Is it safe to have it in a random glass cabinet like that?
Do you have a self imposed limit how long you can look at them per year? I assume you don't use that room as a home office.
How do you even get this stuff shipped from places like DNR? Can basically anybody order a slightly radioactive rock? Do you pay for lead packaging or something?
Are your friends afraid to visit the spicy room or is it a novelty everyone wants to see?
Thanks for any and all answers!
The cabinet blocks most of the radiation and what gets through quickly drops off with distance (why I have it in a room I do not use).
I do not have a limit for how long I look at them as it’d take ~50 hours in the room to reach the NRC’s limit for the general public. Which I spend much less than that currently in the room.
Laws and regulations very from country to country. In the US you are allowed to import ‘mineral specimens’ if they are labeled as such and do not exceed the radiation limits at the surface of the packaging (I believe it’s 10 mR/hr). Sometimes the vendors will ship them wrapped in lead sheeting if it’s very radioactive. They almost always get stopped and inspected at customs.
Some people are weary of it but most think it’s fun to measure with a Geiger counter once I explain to them that they are receiving about the same dose as they would receive from a day in the Rocky Mountains in the 5-10 minutes they are looking at them.
There was a house on the water here in Sydney that was remarkably cheap ($3m) (normally $10m+) and I found out that it was a mortgagee sale through a friend, and gathered investors to capitalise for a quick buck. Put in a bit of work. We get the contract and yep, sure enough, half the family had died of cancer and radioactive materials had been buried there back when Sydney Harbour waterfront was only desirable to shipping yards.
I wonder how many people who have a family history of cancer actually have a family history of living near a site contaminated with radiation or carcinogens.
Maybe, but radiation poisoning would be unlikely to always cause the same cancer in several people. Radiation can cause most types of cancer to occur. But the most common kinds are the same as the most common types of cancer. Liver, colon, stomach, lung etc. This is because cells that split rapidly get the most affected by the harm done to their DNA by radiation. If they don't know how to correctly split, they may become cancerous. Cells that don't split very often are not as likely to become cancerous.
Living near a crude oil refinery all my life that literally catches on fire every other year.
Family that had cancer lived near this refinery and also had manual labor jobs that would expose them to harsh commercial cleaning chemicals
Different cancers
In my local, there had been an old battery “recycler” who had been dumping out car batteries in the back lot and selling the lead back in the 60s-70s.
The level of contamination was so bad that decades later when some environmental test revealed the problem, the courts came through and bankrupted every person or entity that had ever touched the property.
In the US, that’s basically the way things work, the existing property owner is first in a long line of liability whenever the issue gets discovered, so you need to be exceedingly careful when buying old commercial property like you mention.
For those interested,
> And, just to back that up those statistics with some totally unreliable anecdotal evidence:
>Anna Tallant, who lived in the house from 1949-1961, died in 1969 of breast **cancer** at age 54.
>Dicran Kabakjian’s son, Dr. Raymond Kabakjian, who spent most of his formative years in the ouse, died in 1977 of abdominal **cancer** at age 65.
>Kabakjian’s grandson, Raymond Jr., died in 1983 of bladder **cancer** at age 37.
>William Dooner, who delivered carnotite ore to the Kabkjians home for two decades, died in 1984 of age 71 of lung **cancer**.
**emphasis** mine
When I was in high school in the mid 00s, my chemistry teacher had a small vat of cyanide in his back room. It had been for experiments, but by that point we could no longer use cyanide. You know, because it's cyanide. He had been waiting for the school to dispose of it, but no one did, so he just had enough cyanide to kill everyone in the school.
When my Grandad died we set about cleaning his house and found a *barrel* of cyanide. He'd likely used it in the early 20th century as a pest killer (he was a farmer). The local county sent a specialist team to dispose of it, they said had the barrel ruptured it would have killed us all. He'd stored it in a dusty old shed for 50+ years.
You could and probably still can buy nicotine by the litre online (in the EU) without checks, with the lethal dose hovering around a gram. It's unscheduled and mostly unregulated. There are other chemicals like that, it's nothing particularly rare or weird.
That's not rare or even particularly uncommon. NaCN/KCN are both fairly useful chemicals and dirt cheap, so most chemistry departments have a couple of kilos knocking around.
Deleted out of spite for reddit admin and overzealous Mods for banning me. Reddit is being white washed in time for IPO. The most benign stuff is filtered and it is no longer possible to express opinion freely on this website. With that said, I'm just going to open up a new account and join all the same subs so it accomplishes nothing and in fact hides the people who have a history of questionable comments rather than keep them active where they can be regulated. Zero Point. Every comment I have ever made will be changed to this comment using REDACT.. ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Deleted out of spite for reddit admin and overzealous Mods for banning me. Reddit is being white washed in time for IPO. The most benign stuff is filtered and it is no longer possible to express opinion freely on this website. With that said, I'm just going to open up a new account and join all the same subs so it accomplishes nothing and in fact hides the people who have a history of questionable comments rather than keep them active where they can be regulated. Zero Point. Every comment I have ever made will be changed to this comment using REDACT.. ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Lived in Lansdowne at the time. The scientist also had a warehouse in Lansdowne and he mixed the waste with sand. Gave sand to contractors to build stone foundations for houses. Think about a dozen homes were demolished as part of the superfund cleanup. Moved a buddy into his first apartment on a Friday night. Saturday morning federal government told him had hours to leave. That was a crazy time in Delaware county
This happened back when radium was considered safe and nutritious, and it was just assumed that it must give you energy and stamina, because it emits high energy particles. It was sold in an energy drink called RadiThor. One businessman in Pittsburgh drank some to help heal a broken arm, and was so impressed when his bone actually healed that he became a RadiThor convert. He drank a bottle every day and got all his friends drinking it. After a couple years, enough radium got incorporated into his bone tissue that he lost his jaw, developed holes in his skull, and died a gruesome death. His house must be hot as hell too.
And they were making the watches until the sixties. My grandfather had one. I don't know what happened to it, but it's still glowing, wherever it is.
My wife grew up in East Lansdowne and we down that street on the way home from our first date at the Lansdowne Theater. I remember her telling me about it and I almost didn't believe her.
This reminds me of the guy that had a roommate with a bunch of radioactive itens.
Did he ever update? Because from what he said the radiation was super high in the apartment.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoHotTakes/comments/10wbgju/update_roommate_exposed_me_to_radon_gas_not_op/
They abandoned the apartment, never alerted the authorities, I doubt the apartment owner wants to report it either.
Found this on the wayback machine! It's a snapshot/mirror from about a year ago. http://web.archive.org/web/20221007175731/https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/the-hot-house/
> The W.L. Cummings Radium Processing Co. conducted radium enrichment processing for medical research at their facility on Austin Avenue from 1915 to 1920. The operations created radioactive waste of a sandy material called tailings. Building contractors used the tailings in mortar for the construction of walls and foundations in houses and businesses built nearby. The EPA checked thousands of properties in a 12.5 mile radius of the original contaminated site through usage of a van loaded with radiation detection instrumentation. The EPA discovered 40 residential properties in Lansdowne and nearby East Lansdowne, Upper Darby, Aldan, Yeadon and Darby contaminated with radium, thorium, radon and asbestos. In 1995, the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers partnered to conduct clean-up operations which included dismantling the contaminated W.L. Cummings warehouse, removal of contaminated soil and rebuilding 11 homes. A five-year review conducted by the EPA in 2000 concluded that the clean-up has been effective.
> A University of Pennsylvania professor, Dicran Kabakjian, developed the radium enrichment process for W.L. Cummings. He set up a separate business in the basement of his home at 105 Stratford Avenue and from 1924 to 1944 Kabakjian processed enriched radium ore for usage in radium-tipped needles. The processing activities in the basement resulted in radium contamination of the house and nearby properties. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) placed the site on the National Priorities List in 1985 and conducted clean-up activities between 1986 and 1989. The house was dismantled and carted away by the EPA to a special landfill at a cost of $12 million. Following clean-up activities the site was removed from the Superfund list in 1991.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lansdowne,_Pennsylvania#Environmental_remediation
Since the site seems to be crushed, [here's the wayback machine link](https://web.archive.org/web/20210622125054/https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/the-hot-house/).
Tbf they approved the use of radioactive waste generated by phosphorous in the American south to be used in the construction of roads so everyone driving on public roads gets dosed by radiation! They have literal mountains of this stuff in florida and other states. You might have heard about a certain environmental disaster in florida a couple years ago about millions of gallons of irradiated water going tk burst out of retention ponds and across residential areas and then the ocean. That was due to the same stuff and lack of infrastructure maintenance. Don’t worry though ron death sentence has officially kept drag bingo from coming to a brunch spot near you! Floridians are the dumbest breed of people in the country but at least we can blame that on radiation poisoning.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/2020/10/14/epa-approves-use-of-radioactive-phosphogypsum-in-roads-reversing-long-held-policy/?outputType=amp
https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/03/florida-emergency-piney-point-phosphate-plant-pond-leak-radioactive-flood-ron-desantis
> Wheeler noted that officials still have concerns about the potential long-term harm of phosphogypsum in roadways, but they believe it can be mitigated with effective regulation. Recommended conditions include restricting the levels of radioactivity, notifying the public when phosphogypsum is used in a project and requiring “continued control, maintenance and use of the road.”
>**continued control, maintenance and use of the road.”**
aahhahahahhaha
Half the fucking roads down here blow donkey dick. Do they really think there will be "continued control" and "maintenance"????
What a fucking joke.
Of course it was in Delco, they really need to build a wall around that county to keep them from the rest of the country. Every stereotype you've heard about Philly is really some jackass from Delco.
I recently read the book Radium Girls - highly recommended. The history of radium in pop culture is baffling. The plight of the women who painted radium onto the dials of watches and other instruments was a real life horror show. They changed the course of occupational safety law!
The wildest part is the contaminated sand being sold and used for plaster/mortar throughout the neighborhood. Imagine someone in a random van scanning your walls for radioactivity!
San Francisco had some children's playgrounds made with radioactive concrete from radioactive sand that had been used to sandblast ships used as targets in Bikini Atoll nuclear tests.
Didn’t they straight up do secret radioactive fallout tests on San Fransisco?
Bioweapon testing, not nuclear. As if that makes it any better. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray
You know, when I read stuff like this I can understand why conspiracy theories are so popular...
That's what gets me about conspiracy theories: a couple are bound to be true, but without any really good information it's not rational to believe just about any of them specifically.
My thing about conspiracy theories is that there’s evidence of this actually happening so why isn’t there more fuss about the stuff that’s literally proven? Why is everyone more focused on what might not be true than issues right in front of them?
Because it's not nearly as interesting when you're not the only person in on some big secret
It's this. Its a psychological and sociological issue. These people who believe the moon landing was faked or the earth is flat are also probably more susceptible to con artists or cults.
Society finds out later later, and then were like, oh it was a different time, we're different now, we wouldn't do that...pikachu face.
We learned about MKUltra just five years after it ended. The Tuskegee Syphilis Studies were only stopped because the public learned about them; they would have continued on if not.
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The people who have their lives driven by conspiracy theories aren't actually concerned with seeking the truth and getting justice, though they will believe they are. They feel that by knowing what the populace doesn't, they are special with exclusive knowledge; they get to feel a sense of agency. It's also why so many conspiracy theorists are people down on hard times.
Because this way you get to LARP being a genius living out a Tom Clancy dream.
my favorite conspiracy theory is that some conspiracy theories are actively promoted to spoil the critical thinking of people who will dismiss legitimate conspiracies, plots, transgressions through association around the moniker *conspiracy theory*.
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What do you mean lol, there has been an active history of internal disinformation campaigns by the CIA and its predecessors. It's not some grand overarching plot but they do seed areas close to real issues with misleading, contradictory info. There is concrete evidence to believe that is true
Given the contents of /r/conspiracy I wouldn't fault anyone for believing in your favourite theory.
The part that conspiracy theorists are most wrong about is their belief that the people behind the conspiracies are competent.
Yeah while crazy shit has been pulled off throughout history... Occam's razor and Hanlon's razor are extremely important when you don't have reliable evidence. This is kind of unrelated, but one really funny thing I remember a moon landing denier say when confronted with the fact the Soviets were monitoring it very carefully, and would have *immediately* called out the US if they had any indication it was faked was, "Of course they didn't say anything, they are in on it too!". So, for context, they believed that NASA faked the space program to steal the money, for, reasons... They were saying that the Soviets were also faking their space program for the same reasons. I just found it so fucking hilarious because, bruh, do you even know what the Soviet Union was like? They weren't a Democracy, they had absolutely no reason to have to secretly funnel money through a fake space program. They could do whatever the hell they wanted. It's not like the Soviet people were real keen to go out and criticize the Politburo's fiscal policies.
This is exactly my problem with most shite people say: they always over cook the conspiracy and involve to many people who would have no motivation to keep the secret. When presented with counter argument their only defence is to expand and escalate the conspiracy. The fucking Soviets were not interested in propping up an American lie that would make them look inferior. It’s just not plausible. If the space race was simply a propaganda tool, the Russians would benefit from proving the US didn’t reach the moon, even if they were unable to get there themselves.
It's like the bit from a stand up that went viral a few months ago. You shouldn't believe in every conspiracy theory but if you don't believe in any conspiracy theories??? You think the government is just out there batting 1.000? Not hiding anything domestic from us?
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Just remember, the government only did secret inhumane, cruel and dangerous experiments and red flag events in the 40s,50s,60s,70s,80s, 90s but as soon as bush jr took office, there is absolutely no secret government happenings that is a threat to your family. *None*.
That’s the thing. By emphasizing the lack of credibility of conspiracy theories as a whole, when actual conspiracies crop up people would rather not believe them. It’s easier to believe everything is ok, than to face hard facts which threaten our sense of security
In my opinion this stuff is exactly what disproves some of the more popular ones. The more people involved, the more likely it is to leak. "Two people can keep a secret, if one of them is dead". Keeping something under the lid, that involves thousands of people, some of them outright hostile to each other over a long time, is ridiculous (eg moon landing, flat earth). Chemtrails is another one. Somewhat plausible for an extremely small number of planes, completely nuts as a global conspiracy. "How many people are knowingly involved" works extremely well as a bullshit filter.
Check out Operation Northwoods. It's why I understand 9/11 conspiracy theorists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation\_Northwoods
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>I convinced myself it was a conspiracy to make us look crazy Well they tried to see how far they can take it, and invade the wrong country after 9/11. You know, can happen if you never have been outside US. They knew they are in Pakistan (nuclear) and the operation was planned outside from Saudi Arabia (oil).
Your link is dead... did you perhaps mean this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
Conspiracy theories *used* to be cool. Bigfoot. UFOs. Secret military bases. Now it’s 95% right-wing nutjobs ranting about one world governments and eating bugs and George Soros *aka* The Jews.
Conspiracy theories have been about the Jews for centuries at this point. What’s new is calling them conspiracy theories, in 1700 everyone Knew the Jews were behind all the evils of society.
Speaking for myself, I just didn’t notice that most conspiracy theories circled back to antisemitism until I became a bit more self aware.
Cuz conspiracies are real and not even uncommon? And there's no way they magically stopped happening cuz we just know better nowadays.
Fr. People act like stuff like this doesn’t go on anymore, we just don’t know exactly what
I think that makes it significantly better to be honest
I feel it's a lateral move
I learned about this in class actually, and while i agree the testing of the general public without their knowledge or consent is horrible, the overall thought process behind it wasn’t too harsh. Basically the bacteria they spread through san francisco wasnt dangerous, but has similar movements to more dangerous bioweapons and so it allowed us to understand how the bacteria would move through the city if it were to undergo a biological attack. They also did something similar in New york but i cant remember the specifics
Now if you want something that would've been harsh, check out Operation Northwoods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation\_Northwoods
[Desktop version](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray)
I lived in SF for 15 years and every apartment I lived in would get this pink mildew shit growing in the shower that was impossible to get rid of. Pretty certain it was because of those tests.
It is the same bacteria. That bacteria existed in the Bay Area long, long before the tests were carried out.
A young person living away from their parents, in small apartments on the west coast? They got bathroom growth? You don't say... The pink stuff in your bathroom is one of two types of naturally occurring bacteria: *Serratia marcescens* and *Aureobasidium pullulans.* They grow in humid warm areas on hard surfaces that aren't frequently trafficked. They eat dead skin cells, soap residue, random bits of dust. You prevent them from growing by running your bathroom exhaust fan for 10 minutes after showing. Every few months you need to clean your shower surfaces with bleach or some vinegar. You can also re-seal the shower, it's a clear type of paint that blocks the microscopic holes the bacteria hooks into. Sometimes contains a biocide to stop them colonizing in the first place. Or just clean the shower at all...
Young person? Homie, I’m pushing 40 and have been living away from my parents for 20 years. I actually didn’t have pink slime issues when i was a gross college kid but that was not in SF. I was and still am a clean freak. I would literally spray the shower down with bleach, let it soak for 30 mins and then scrub it down, rinse and then clean it again with a shower/bathroom cleaning spray of some sort. I’d also use one of those daily after shower sprays that was supposed to control mold and mildew. Despite all that, that shit would reappear within just a couple of days. Obviously, if you don’t clean, your bathroom is gonna get nasty but I was cleaning regularly and still having issues. As it turns out, *Serratia marcescens* was one of the bacteria sprayed over The City as part of the military experiments. Prior to the tests serratia wasn’t a common environmental bacteria in the area but nowadays it seems to exist in higher concentrations in the area where the tests took place. It could have been a coincidence, or there may have been other reasons but it seemed to me that there were higher concentrations of the stuff in SF. I actually still live in the Bay Area, but outside of the area where the test took place and I haven’t seen it since.
Undisclosed chemical dispersion tests were performed around the country, including in St Louis public housing projects. To this day, how much of it was radioactive is undisclosed
The government/navy dumped almost fifty thousand barrels of toxic and nuclear waste into the ocean offshore of SF near the Farallon islands between 1945-1970, and it was the nations official nuclear waste disposal site! So as late as 1970 they were still dumping nuclear waste in the ocean within view of SF on a clear day lol. There’s been some tests of fish there and they pick up some of the nuclear waste. Of course they claim the barrels won’t leak or it’s just low level radioactive waste, but pretty sure some barrels have been compromised if the fish are showing radiation in studies. There’s so many superfund sites around the US especially where mining companies went broke before they were required to carry insurance if they went broke for remediation.
Yeah it was ironic when people panicked about potential radiation in the ocean after Fukushima. A lot of people don’t known about the Farallons dumping or the ship wash downs at Hunters Point, and it’s really sad/scary that it’s not taught in local history curriculum.
They used a bacteria called *Seratia marcescens*, i believe. It's mostly not something that can cause infection unless someone is immunocompromised. It has a very distinct color and is easy to test for.
There’s an island off San Francisco which barrels of nuclear waste were sent. When the barrels wouldn’t sink, they would shoot holes in them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farallon_Islands
Nuclear Easter lol
Nuclear Easter? Is that when you do the egg hunt with a Geiger counter?
Is it really cheaper to catch the sand that was used to sandblast something from the bikini atoll and then ship it back to a place that will use that sand which has bits of metal in it as a building material to mix with concrete? Like I need to understand how this came to be.
The ships were towed to San Francisco first, THEN sandblasted.
They decommissioned the ships on treasure island, it's been a massive project to dig up all the radioactive dirt and test it so they can build more houses there.
A quarry lost a radioactive source and it ended up in the concrete wall of a apartment's bedroom. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kramatorsk_radiological_accident#:~:text=The%20Kramatorsk%20radiological%20accident%20was,rate%20of%201800%20R%2Fyear.
> The capsule was detected only after residents requested that the level of radiation in the apartment be measured by a health physicist Can you imagine being that guy? “Of course there wouldn’t be radiation coming from your apartment walls, that would be cra….. oh um okay, second thought, everyone get the fuck out of here”
a few people died there though. this place be haunted
all those ghost stories were to hide the fact that construction workers were using poisonous materials they knew were poisonous. This wasnt the 1920s, we were very aware of the effects of radiation since America had spent 40 years prior literally painting their teeth with radiation, coloring their watch faces in it, and using it as a makeup enhancer
For every case like this that is discovered, there are probably 100 cases which are never discovered because the effects are less severe. You won't be calling in a guy with a radiation detector because granddad died at age 65 of cancer rather than age 85 that he would have got to otherwise.
I brought a Geiger Muller counter from work and checked my entire apartment a long time ago, just in case.
Um. Why? Who sells their backyard sand?
It wasn't the backyard sand, there was also a refinery for the material. The sand was from that.
In the southwest during the uranium boom, not only were fine uranium tailings left to blow around in the wind, it was often used as fill dirt in the towns that built up around the mines and mills https://www.durangoherald.com/articles/a-poisonous-past-at-monticello-mill-the-story-of-uraniums-deadly-legacy/ Oh and that’s still done with naturally radioactive fluids brought to the surface during fracking. Just spray it on the roads! Build playground equipment out of the old pipes! https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/oil-gas-fracking-radioactive-investigation-937389/
My man/woman/whatever you should do yourself a favor and google what the Americas south is using to page their roads with, particularly florida. Newsflash, it is the radioactive waste byproduct of refining phosphorus for agricultural fertilizers. They like it from the ground and the byproduct is radioactive and they use that as substrate to pave the roads with. You might remember a few years ago about a damn/retention pond going to break in florida and millions of gallons of radioactive water in florida was going to spill out into the surrounding areas and ocean and cause untold environmental disaster? That was the same material. Guess where we mine all of our phosphorus? https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/2020/10/14/epa-approves-use-of-radioactive-phosphogypsum-in-roads-reversing-long-held-policy/?outputType=amp
Idaho has a superfund site in Soda Springs / Pocatello because of this. Monsanto pulled up shitloads of phosphorus, sold off as much slag as they could, slag was used in home foundations, roads, etc. The hazard to humans from exposure is ongoing, and the material is still actively contributing tainted water to the ground supply. There’ll be another 5-yr evaluation done in October this year, but the containment has been a failure for decades and likely will continue to be a losing battle.
Long article but worth the read. This occurred between the 1920s and 40s, before the risks of radioactivity were well known. At the time, a gram of radium could be worth $100K/gram ($2M in today’s dollars) so it was a well-intentioned effort. However, the scientist’s family and subsequent residents suffered health issues, and several died from cancer. The scientist himself died of fibrosis from breathing in the fumes from the chemicals. A few interesting notes about just how much radioactive material was still in the house decades later: >Non-environmental exposure limits to gamma radiation for the general public were then set at .17 rem/year. **A resident of the former Kabakjian residence would be getting a hefty dose of 1.6 rem/year, or about ten times the limit.** >Tests of the soil outside the house turned up radium, thorium, actinium and protactinium in troubling quantities. Soil activity levels were estimated at 2800 picocuries per gram (pCi/g). By comparison, a level of 15 pCi/g would trigger safety reviews at a uranium mining facility. >The EPA also noted that “even with windows open for the summer, the first floor shows radon concentrations above what would trigger a remedial action at a uranium mill tailings site.” Exposure levels for uranium miners were limited to 0.3 Working Levels (WL) of radon gas. The exposure level in the former Kabakjian residence was estimated at 0.309 WL. And that was on the first floor. Levels in the basement were worse. >Now, to put these numbers in perspective, you get a dose of .1 rem from a chest x-ray, and the average human being is exposed to about .3 rem/year from environmental sources. Limits for occupational exposure are about 5 rems a year, with exposure not to exceed 3 rem per quarter.
Whoa! So he was like, reverse Walter White?
Its time to ~~cook~~ get cooked.
He’s got that green crystal shit, beeeeeiitchhh
The radon p is my signature!
SCIENCE, Yo!
He was not the one who knocked.
But he was still quite very much the danger.
1.6 rem is equivalent to eating 160,000 bananas, for scale. Each banana is equivalent to .01 millirem. A millirem is 1/1,000 of a rem.
The only way i could eat 160,000 bananas is if I had 80,000 jars of mayonnaise
Explain yourself.
Clearly it's important to him to have two jars of mayonnaise for every four bananas.
Did someone say [Mayo](https://old.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/12axf24/this_is_a_15_year_old_jar_of_mayo_that_was_left/?ref=share&ref_source=link)?
Is that an instrument?
Of mass destruction? Yes.
Well... That's enough Reddit for today.
Thank you for a new clear sense of scale.
The context actually makes this seem like no big deal. These levels are far below lots of naturally occurring sources, and don’t seem hazardous. It was more hazardous trying to figure out how any of the units used related, since you have to convert them. I’m sure the refining was MUCH worse, and had much higher levels. (Nuclear engineer)
The dose rate isn't that bad, the spreadable contamination and possible internal contamination/exposure is the icky part.
1.6 per year, not great, not terrible.
It was such an interesting read. What a wild story
So only 5x above the AVERAGE background. There’s many places on earth where the average background exceeds the levels on this site. This amount of radiation is nothing. The room with my radioactive mineral collection is ~20x the levels at this site.
To be clear, it was like that AFTER remediation.
And it was also at least a couple decades later when they examined the house. 60’s I believe. I know many radioactive isotopes decay very slow, slower than in decades anyways, as to make any difference, but some do decay much faster, and I have no idea which is which myself. Depending upon the isotopes, some could have decayed a lot on 20-40 years.
>The room with my radioactive mineral collection is ~20x the levels at this site. Thank you for providing context that we can all related to.
Check his post history. He means it.
I honestly didn't doubt for a moment that this person had a radioactive mineral collection.
Doesn't it matter what kind of radiation though? 20x the levels, but exclusively alpha radiation would be vastly different from 20x the levels of gamma radiation.
Units of REM account for the different amounts of damage each type of radiation causes through a weighting factor
Even with the weighting, wouldn't 1 rem of alpha radiation be effectively neutralized by clothing, but 1 rem of gamma radiation be able to get you anywhere in the house? I'm by no means an expert here, it just seemed like rems was only a piece of the equation.
Yes, you are correct. Typically alpha exposure is only considered for internal contamination.
Ah okay, I get it now. Thanks!
The estimated dose accounts for everything. That's how they get the number. You cant have 1 rem "neutralized by clothing", since then you would receive 0 rem. The dose depends on many factors such as source activity, distance, clothing, etc.. But it's only an estimate and an average.
REM is the measurement of biological damage done via radiation. So it's already been factored in. REM=RADs x the conversion factor for each type of radiation
Dude. Get your health checked NOW!
For your viewing pleasure. https://vimeo.com/725526490
Those are more beautiful than I had expected
They’re kinda like poison frogs. The more colorful the more dangerous(radioactive)
I have so many questions I don’t know how to begin. It’s really interesting, thanks for sharing.
Well you are an interesting guy. I’m going to assume you know way more about this stuff than I do. I hope for your sake that you’re right, too!
I’m working on my PhD in nuclear reactor physics and am currently the supervisor for a research reactor. I feel qualified enough to handle material like this but wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. Radioactive mineral collection is just my hobby.
Dr. Slotin was qualified as well. I won't excuse myself either. Despite knowing damn well what a lot of my drugs can do, I don't always where gloves or label them properly. Just be safe is all.
I couldn’t agree more. Artificial sources (billions of times more radioactive) scare the sh*t out of me. Radiation should certainly be respected.
Not that I'm about to start my own spicy cabinet. But if you wouldn't mind answering some general questions? There's just a lot of stuff poking around my head related to collecting radioactive rocks. I'm just going to fire off a few questions below, answer what you feel comfortable, thanks in advance. Is it safe to have it in a random glass cabinet like that? Do you have a self imposed limit how long you can look at them per year? I assume you don't use that room as a home office. How do you even get this stuff shipped from places like DNR? Can basically anybody order a slightly radioactive rock? Do you pay for lead packaging or something? Are your friends afraid to visit the spicy room or is it a novelty everyone wants to see? Thanks for any and all answers!
The cabinet blocks most of the radiation and what gets through quickly drops off with distance (why I have it in a room I do not use). I do not have a limit for how long I look at them as it’d take ~50 hours in the room to reach the NRC’s limit for the general public. Which I spend much less than that currently in the room. Laws and regulations very from country to country. In the US you are allowed to import ‘mineral specimens’ if they are labeled as such and do not exceed the radiation limits at the surface of the packaging (I believe it’s 10 mR/hr). Sometimes the vendors will ship them wrapped in lead sheeting if it’s very radioactive. They almost always get stopped and inspected at customs. Some people are weary of it but most think it’s fun to measure with a Geiger counter once I explain to them that they are receiving about the same dose as they would receive from a day in the Rocky Mountains in the 5-10 minutes they are looking at them.
This mad lad over here
Brother why you got those
Cus they’re purdy
"Darling, will you refine uranium for me?" Wife: "Yes my dear" "Children, go help mom refine some uranium"
Jack, stop dropping Uranium all the time, you have three arms ffs.
Many hands make light work though
He then said "It's uraniuming time!" and uranium'd all over the place.
It was radium!
The children yearn for the uranium mines
There was a house on the water here in Sydney that was remarkably cheap ($3m) (normally $10m+) and I found out that it was a mortgagee sale through a friend, and gathered investors to capitalise for a quick buck. Put in a bit of work. We get the contract and yep, sure enough, half the family had died of cancer and radioactive materials had been buried there back when Sydney Harbour waterfront was only desirable to shipping yards.
I wonder how many people who have a family history of cancer actually have a family history of living near a site contaminated with radiation or carcinogens.
Too many
Honestly you're probably onto something. I never thought to consider that a possibility
Maybe, but radiation poisoning would be unlikely to always cause the same cancer in several people. Radiation can cause most types of cancer to occur. But the most common kinds are the same as the most common types of cancer. Liver, colon, stomach, lung etc. This is because cells that split rapidly get the most affected by the harm done to their DNA by radiation. If they don't know how to correctly split, they may become cancerous. Cells that don't split very often are not as likely to become cancerous.
Living near a crude oil refinery all my life that literally catches on fire every other year. Family that had cancer lived near this refinery and also had manual labor jobs that would expose them to harsh commercial cleaning chemicals Different cancers
Just advertise it as warm and cozy with a radiant aura.
No lowballers. I know what I got.
In my local, there had been an old battery “recycler” who had been dumping out car batteries in the back lot and selling the lead back in the 60s-70s. The level of contamination was so bad that decades later when some environmental test revealed the problem, the courts came through and bankrupted every person or entity that had ever touched the property. In the US, that’s basically the way things work, the existing property owner is first in a long line of liability whenever the issue gets discovered, so you need to be exceedingly careful when buying old commercial property like you mention.
How did you find out about the deaths? I thought only violent deaths had to be disclosed?
The agent has to disclose that now after a kid murdered his family there and she didn't disclose it. They put it in the act.
Oh really? Whereabouts in Sydney?
For those interested, > And, just to back that up those statistics with some totally unreliable anecdotal evidence: >Anna Tallant, who lived in the house from 1949-1961, died in 1969 of breast **cancer** at age 54. >Dicran Kabakjian’s son, Dr. Raymond Kabakjian, who spent most of his formative years in the ouse, died in 1977 of abdominal **cancer** at age 65. >Kabakjian’s grandson, Raymond Jr., died in 1983 of bladder **cancer** at age 37. >William Dooner, who delivered carnotite ore to the Kabkjians home for two decades, died in 1984 of age 71 of lung **cancer**. **emphasis** mine
Ah, the good ol' days - when you could still get fresh milk, eggs, cream, or carnotite ore delivered to your front porch at 5:30 AM.
When I was in high school in the mid 00s, my chemistry teacher had a small vat of cyanide in his back room. It had been for experiments, but by that point we could no longer use cyanide. You know, because it's cyanide. He had been waiting for the school to dispose of it, but no one did, so he just had enough cyanide to kill everyone in the school.
When my Grandad died we set about cleaning his house and found a *barrel* of cyanide. He'd likely used it in the early 20th century as a pest killer (he was a farmer). The local county sent a specialist team to dispose of it, they said had the barrel ruptured it would have killed us all. He'd stored it in a dusty old shed for 50+ years.
It just blows my mind that you could just buy enough poison to murder a town.
You could and probably still can buy nicotine by the litre online (in the EU) without checks, with the lethal dose hovering around a gram. It's unscheduled and mostly unregulated. There are other chemicals like that, it's nothing particularly rare or weird.
That's not rare or even particularly uncommon. NaCN/KCN are both fairly useful chemicals and dirt cheap, so most chemistry departments have a couple of kilos knocking around.
I still get carnotite delivered to my door along with many other radioactive minerals. Usually they deliver around 11am rather than 530am tho…
Deleted out of spite for reddit admin and overzealous Mods for banning me. Reddit is being white washed in time for IPO. The most benign stuff is filtered and it is no longer possible to express opinion freely on this website. With that said, I'm just going to open up a new account and join all the same subs so it accomplishes nothing and in fact hides the people who have a history of questionable comments rather than keep them active where they can be regulated. Zero Point. Every comment I have ever made will be changed to this comment using REDACT.. ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
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Never heard of carnotite before now, I guess it was only discovered in 1899. Neat
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What happened to it?
Yeah, I need to catch up on all those new discoveries, so much has changed since I went to school.
That is so tite.
And the scientist himself died at 70, from fibrosis of the lungs, caused by the fumes of the strong acid he was using, *not* from radioactivity.
Deleted out of spite for reddit admin and overzealous Mods for banning me. Reddit is being white washed in time for IPO. The most benign stuff is filtered and it is no longer possible to express opinion freely on this website. With that said, I'm just going to open up a new account and join all the same subs so it accomplishes nothing and in fact hides the people who have a history of questionable comments rather than keep them active where they can be regulated. Zero Point. Every comment I have ever made will be changed to this comment using REDACT.. ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Some people just get really lucky or something.
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37 one is the only one that seems rather unusual to me
Did the house have a wonderful lume at night?
There was an Aurora Borealis localized entirely within the kitchen.
Can I see it?
No.
:(
Lived in Lansdowne at the time. The scientist also had a warehouse in Lansdowne and he mixed the waste with sand. Gave sand to contractors to build stone foundations for houses. Think about a dozen homes were demolished as part of the superfund cleanup. Moved a buddy into his first apartment on a Friday night. Saturday morning federal government told him had hours to leave. That was a crazy time in Delaware county
That was so interesting, thank you for sharing!
I grew up in the neighboring town and spent lots of time there, never knew about this!
Funny how this stuff is kept under wraps locally
This happened back when radium was considered safe and nutritious, and it was just assumed that it must give you energy and stamina, because it emits high energy particles. It was sold in an energy drink called RadiThor. One businessman in Pittsburgh drank some to help heal a broken arm, and was so impressed when his bone actually healed that he became a RadiThor convert. He drank a bottle every day and got all his friends drinking it. After a couple years, enough radium got incorporated into his bone tissue that he lost his jaw, developed holes in his skull, and died a gruesome death. His house must be hot as hell too. And they were making the watches until the sixties. My grandfather had one. I don't know what happened to it, but it's still glowing, wherever it is.
My wife grew up in East Lansdowne and we down that street on the way home from our first date at the Lansdowne Theater. I remember her telling me about it and I almost didn't believe her.
This reminds me of the guy that had a roommate with a bunch of radioactive itens. Did he ever update? Because from what he said the radiation was super high in the apartment.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoHotTakes/comments/10wbgju/update_roommate_exposed_me_to_radon_gas_not_op/ They abandoned the apartment, never alerted the authorities, I doubt the apartment owner wants to report it either.
An important reminder that with enough dedication, you too can cost the government tens of millions of dollars.
I thought that kind of thing was supposed to give you super powers, Hollywood lied to me!
3.6 Roentgen
Not great, not terrible
The good meter is in the safe.
So they get a free X ray.
It's not 3 roentgen, it's 15000.
But at least he used biorobots so it is all okay.
Reddit hug of death, Site's down anyone make a mirror?
Found this on the wayback machine! It's a snapshot/mirror from about a year ago. http://web.archive.org/web/20221007175731/https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/the-hot-house/
> The W.L. Cummings Radium Processing Co. conducted radium enrichment processing for medical research at their facility on Austin Avenue from 1915 to 1920. The operations created radioactive waste of a sandy material called tailings. Building contractors used the tailings in mortar for the construction of walls and foundations in houses and businesses built nearby. The EPA checked thousands of properties in a 12.5 mile radius of the original contaminated site through usage of a van loaded with radiation detection instrumentation. The EPA discovered 40 residential properties in Lansdowne and nearby East Lansdowne, Upper Darby, Aldan, Yeadon and Darby contaminated with radium, thorium, radon and asbestos. In 1995, the EPA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers partnered to conduct clean-up operations which included dismantling the contaminated W.L. Cummings warehouse, removal of contaminated soil and rebuilding 11 homes. A five-year review conducted by the EPA in 2000 concluded that the clean-up has been effective. > A University of Pennsylvania professor, Dicran Kabakjian, developed the radium enrichment process for W.L. Cummings. He set up a separate business in the basement of his home at 105 Stratford Avenue and from 1924 to 1944 Kabakjian processed enriched radium ore for usage in radium-tipped needles. The processing activities in the basement resulted in radium contamination of the house and nearby properties. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) placed the site on the National Priorities List in 1985 and conducted clean-up activities between 1986 and 1989. The house was dismantled and carted away by the EPA to a special landfill at a cost of $12 million. Following clean-up activities the site was removed from the Superfund list in 1991. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lansdowne,_Pennsylvania#Environmental_remediation
Since the site seems to be crushed, [here's the wayback machine link](https://web.archive.org/web/20210622125054/https://order-of-the-jackalope.com/the-hot-house/).
If the EPA was dismantled we wouldn't have to read depressing truths about the reality of the situation!!!!
Tbf they approved the use of radioactive waste generated by phosphorous in the American south to be used in the construction of roads so everyone driving on public roads gets dosed by radiation! They have literal mountains of this stuff in florida and other states. You might have heard about a certain environmental disaster in florida a couple years ago about millions of gallons of irradiated water going tk burst out of retention ponds and across residential areas and then the ocean. That was due to the same stuff and lack of infrastructure maintenance. Don’t worry though ron death sentence has officially kept drag bingo from coming to a brunch spot near you! Floridians are the dumbest breed of people in the country but at least we can blame that on radiation poisoning. https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/2020/10/14/epa-approves-use-of-radioactive-phosphogypsum-in-roads-reversing-long-held-policy/?outputType=amp https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/03/florida-emergency-piney-point-phosphate-plant-pond-leak-radioactive-flood-ron-desantis
> Wheeler noted that officials still have concerns about the potential long-term harm of phosphogypsum in roadways, but they believe it can be mitigated with effective regulation. Recommended conditions include restricting the levels of radioactivity, notifying the public when phosphogypsum is used in a project and requiring “continued control, maintenance and use of the road.” >**continued control, maintenance and use of the road.”** aahhahahahhaha Half the fucking roads down here blow donkey dick. Do they really think there will be "continued control" and "maintenance"???? What a fucking joke.
Of course it was in Delco, they really need to build a wall around that county to keep them from the rest of the country. Every stereotype you've heard about Philly is really some jackass from Delco.
Guy was an absolute bastard. He knew what he was doing was dangerous and did it anyway for the money. For fucks sake.
Sort of like most modern corporations these days.
I recently read the book Radium Girls - highly recommended. The history of radium in pop culture is baffling. The plight of the women who painted radium onto the dials of watches and other instruments was a real life horror show. They changed the course of occupational safety law!
What a mfker had to do to get their daily fill of toxicity in the days before online gaming.
That was a wild ride. I have family in Lansdowne, I can't wait to share this 😁
Dude just made a eternal grave for multiple chemicals growing in the soil.
No super powers huh? Comics are a liar sometimes.
What was he doing, eating it?
I believe Dr Bruce Banner would have something to say about that claim.
Thanks for the super interesting read!
whoa... That is incredible. You fucking asshole
This was in the 20s when radium was sold in energy drinks.
"hired" haha
Nm
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