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Why is my dryer radioactive?

physics.stackexchange.com

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Re: Why is my dryer radioactive?

#91

Post by ilyt »

K2h wrote: post #78
BetterGeiger wrote: post #33

I think the core of the explanation given is correct but some of the adjacent details need adjustment. The important part is: "Clothes dryers are very effective at making statically charged surfaces. (Dryer sheets help.) So when radon and its temporary decay products are blown through the dryer, electrically-polarized molecules tend to be attracted to the charged surfaces" What that commenter misses is that nearly al…

$149 for https://www.bettergeiger.com/product-list/p/better-geiger-ra...

I'm mildly disappointed that banana is not listed as option for test material

Re: Why is my dryer radioactive?

#92

Post by ilyt »

hinkley wrote: post #82
danbtl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had such a remediation done recently, in Alberta close to the rocky mountains. Costs were around $2,000 CAD to install a sub-slab depressurization system (i.e. a fan that pulls air from below the house and vents it away from the house). Radon values dropped from around 500 Bq/m3 to less than 20 Bq/m3.

Those systems must be new. The classic solution is to install drain pipes before pouring the slab, so one can imagine how difficult it would be using 1980's construction techniques to retroactively add piping below a finished house. We also had to dig trenches to lay natural gas lines, but we have a way to do those with horizontal boring techniques (of course then people who didn't know what they were doing put them…

>Those systems must be new. The classic solution is to install drain pipes before pouring the slab, so one can imagine how difficult it would be using 1980's construction techniques to retroactively add piping below a finished house.

They didn't had diggers and drills in the 80's ?

Re: Why is my dryer radioactive?

#93

Post by thewanderer1983 »

BetterGeiger wrote: post #33

I think the core of the explanation given is correct but some of the adjacent details need adjustment. The important part is: "Clothes dryers are very effective at making statically charged surfaces. (Dryer sheets help.) So when radon and its temporary decay products are blown through the dryer, electrically-polarized molecules tend to be attracted to the charged surfaces" What that commenter misses is that nearly al…

>What that commenter misses is that nearly all hobbyist grade detectors (Geiger tubes) are not sensitive to alpha

from the original post: "If your Geiger counter is actually detecting radiation, it's almost certainly the half-hour lead and bismuth. " If you look at the table he provided lead and bismuth are beta decay. It is likely he is specifying that on the fact that most home geiger counters only detect beta and gamma not alpha.

Re: Why is my dryer radioactive?

#94

Post by pfdietz »

schiffern wrote: post #38
dmicah wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can be an issue everywhere, Radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer, after smoking.

This claim (which ultimately came from the EPA) is suspect at best. It just comes from assuming a Linear No-Threshold model, which flatly contradicts the available body of medical evidence. https://youtu.be/TYZglUjLE0Y

Indeed, it's good to be cautious of such claims. Low level radiation could be worse than predicted by the LNT.

Re: Why is my dryer radioactive?

#95

Post by pfdietz »

schiffern wrote: post #84
joshuahedlund wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting this, I will check it out. As a Midwesterner with a basement I had once looked into those claims about radon as the second-highest cause of lung cancer with concern and found the evidence much weaker than I expected. Even by EPA estimates[0] almost 90% of the lung cancer deaths attributed to radon are smokers (i.e. who have already weakened lungs), and there didn't seem to be good evidence of damag…

Let me preemptively disclaim that I do have nitpicks about the talk I linked, but IMO his main argument is sound. In particular I think his scientific explanations aren't always fully accurate, and he worries about measurement minutia very strenuously. Also at one point he says you could breathe 80% radon/20% oxygen, which while chemically this is true, radiologically it would be suicidal. Those nitpicks aside, his p…

The alternative to LNT is to conservatively assume radiation has the maximum effect not ruled out by evidence (after all, radiation is not a criminal defendant that's innocent until proven guilty). This would make low level radiation more dangerous than predicted by LNT, not less.

Re: Why is my dryer radioactive?

#96

Post by duskwuff »

eastbound wrote: post #76
afterburner wrote: post #3

> I was once prevented from leaving a neutron-science facility at Los Alamos after the seat of my pants set off a radiation alarm on exit. This was odd because the neutron beam had been off for weeks. It was a Saturday, so the radiation safety technician on call didn't arrive for half an hour — at which point I was clean, so the detective questions began. I had spent the day sitting on a plastic step stool. The tech…

> I had spent the day sitting on a plastic step stool So, if it attracts radon, does it raise the risk profile of the person? Should I ban sitting on static-electricity objects in radon-sensitive areas?

Not really. If there's that much radon in the air, it's a risk to health with or without the static electricity.

(Los Alamos doesn't have dangerous concentrations of radon; they just have very sensitive detectors.)

Re: Why is my dryer radioactive?

#97

Post by hackernewds »

robocat wrote: post #67
belter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPT-4 get's this wrong...There is still hope for humans...

At least lay the blame correctly: humans get this wrong and they write it all over the internet and we then train our models on incorrect information. An astonishing amount of what we each believe is plain wrong, especially when we have little stories about it.

which means GPT will never be smarter than humans? same conclusion

Re: Why is my dryer radioactive?

#98

Post by axutio »

hackernewds wrote: post #97
robocat wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least lay the blame correctly: humans get this wrong and they write it all over the internet and we then train our models on incorrect information. An astonishing amount of what we each believe is plain wrong, especially when we have little stories about it.

which means GPT will never be smarter than humans? same conclusion

No, but instead means that GPT can't be smarter than the people who are writing the published content on the web (generally, the very smartest humans if you're considering high quality published works alone).

If you could do a perfect job of training a GPT on the entirety of published academic literature, the total of what that GPT could spit out would be limited by the knowledge contained in academic literature. At the same time, you'd have created a tool that is cheap and does a good job of synthesizing knowledge/answering questions across all disciplines. The model will never replace the scientists who are working at the very bounds of their fields, but it doesn't have to in order to be extremely useful, even useful enough to replace a majority of knowledge workers.

Just because GPTs can't be smarter than the smartest humans doesn't mean they can't be smarter than most humans.

Re: Why is my dryer radioactive?

#99

Post by iudqnolq »

ilyt wrote: post #92
hinkley wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those systems must be new. The classic solution is to install drain pipes before pouring the slab, so one can imagine how difficult it would be using 1980's construction techniques to retroactively add piping below a finished house. We also had to dig trenches to lay natural gas lines, but we have a way to do those with horizontal boring techniques (of course then people who didn't know what they were doing put them…

>Those systems must be new. The classic solution is to install drain pipes before pouring the slab, so one can imagine how difficult it would be using 1980's construction techniques to retroactively add piping below a finished house. They didn't had diggers and drills in the 80's ?

It's easy to make a hole. Making a hole underground without making a hole aboveground is harder.

Re: Why is my dryer radioactive?

#100

Post by Turskarama »

thewanderer1983 wrote: post #93
BetterGeiger wrote: post #33

I think the core of the explanation given is correct but some of the adjacent details need adjustment. The important part is: "Clothes dryers are very effective at making statically charged surfaces. (Dryer sheets help.) So when radon and its temporary decay products are blown through the dryer, electrically-polarized molecules tend to be attracted to the charged surfaces" What that commenter misses is that nearly al…

>What that commenter misses is that nearly all hobbyist grade detectors (Geiger tubes) are not sensitive to alpha from the original post: "If your Geiger counter is actually detecting radiation, it's almost certainly the half-hour lead and bismuth. " If you look at the table he provided lead and bismuth are beta decay. It is likely he is specifying that on the fact that most home geiger counters only detect beta and…

Could also be a happy accident though. Half an hour is short enough that the amount of radiation emitted is pretty high, but long enough that it hasn't pretty much all decayed by the time you try to measure it.
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