Why are Hiroshima and Nagasaki safe to live while Marie Curie’s notebook won’t be safe to handle for at least another millennium?
In: Physics
Marie Curie’s notebooks are, for any practical purpose, safe to handle. The amount of radiation you would absorb by reasonably handling them is like 1% of the recommended safety limits for radiation exposure.
The safety precautions are more of a “better safe than sorry” sort of thing. One general rule with radiation exposure is “As Low As Reasonably Practicable”, that is try to do whatever is practical to limit exposure to radiation. An example of this might be when you go and get dental X-rays they give you a lead vest and trigger the X-ray from outside the room. Safety precautions should include mitigating both direct exposure (i.e. in the same environment as the radioactive thing) and contamination (i.e. transfer of radioactive material to new places). The latter runs the risk of internalizing the radioactive material via ingestion or inhalation, where it would have the potential to cause more harm, and should be a serious concern for something like Curie’s notebook.
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