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This is why we've collaborated with nuclear regulatory bodies in the past to get companies closed down for selling these quack products taken off the shelves. We have no problems handling radioactive material because we take the appropriate precautions whenever we KNOW the product to be radioactive. The sale of pendants, personal massagers, bed blankets and sanitary pads containing thorium oxide powders as “negative ion” products is reprehensible because none of these products REQUIRE radioactivity to function and only serve in exposing unaware individuals to higher than normal doses.
As mentioned, we handle these items with special attention, store them in a lead lined box which blocks enough of the radiation that when a Geiger counter is put 1 cm away from the closed box the emitted radiation is unnoticeable from the background. When we open it, it’s always in a well ventilated room or the fume hood. We wear gloves when handling the parts that could fragment and leave residue on us. Not because these items are immensely dangerous, they’re nothing compared to setting off a submerged thermite charge, but they carry an elevated risk that we aim to mitigate.
With all of this laid out, it’s important to state we aren’t for bans on the sale of radioactive material, for they have their uses and when the correct safety measures are taken, pose little to no danger. Nuclear power is a great example of this, even though it’s been vilified as some immensely dangerous method of powering our society, it’s in fact one of the safest when we compare it to other forms of fuels, even when including the worst nuclear disasters. It just takes strong regulatory bodies and transparency to implement, something that is essential for complex systems to effectively function. It would appear though that good governance is becoming rarer these days as autocrats seem to favour loyalty over any form of expertise. Be careful out there folks, the guard rails are falling off.
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