[ImanCarrot]

In me old company when work was slack the management had the guys angle grinding some components out of their aluminium housings.

I vagualy recalled that the components contained Thorium 232, an alpha emitter.

The point only got home to management when I said

"look, would you breathe in plutonium or uranium dust?"

"No way" was the indignant reply.

"Well" I said "Thorium 232 is more tightly controlled from a contamination point of view than both of them. Basicaly your are, by law, allowed more Plutonium or Uranium dust on the shop floor than Th232".

That made the point, but I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't mentioned/ remembered it.

On the other side- had a friend who worked at a comany that stripped asbestos- they wore full enclosed suits, boots and air filtered helmets. They worked in a positive pressure environment with extraction via monitored filters.

When they wanted a cigarette they would hide round the back and use a stanley knife to slit a hole in the plastic enclosure which they'd tape up afterwards (of course removing their filtration helmets)... mesotheleoma takes around 25 years to develop.

Another guy I knew was cleaning pitch off off a burner in a 10' X 10' enclosed cubicle with trichloethane which is non flamable, but cos of the smell the guys on the shop floor moaned so he shut the door and continued. After cleaning with tric he finished off with methanol and when done clicked the burner on to check it was ok. The atmosphere exploded blowing all the windows out- he didn't work again- the paper overals he was wearing made the burns worse.

Mind you, at the same company they used to wash the picth off their hands using trichloroethane cos they'd heard that the previous stuff they used, napthalene, was dodgy.

Seen a guy at the same company eating his sandwiches with his hands and arms up to his elbows covered in red arsenic trisulphide dust. Guess he didn't know it was dodgy.