Radioactive Charms Not So Charming

A Japanese couple who sold lucky charms guaranteed to glow for more than a decade were forced to stop after it was discovered that the charms were radioactive. The pair, ironically based in Hiroshima, imported tritium from Britain for the charms. Unfortunately they used 27 times more tritium than is allowed under Japanese law. It seems to me that the people who have to constantly fight Godzilla would make it harder for someone to order radioactive materials.

Perfect plan...

[oneal13rru]

Very lucky, when you die of radiation sickness, it will be easy to find the body, as the wrist will be glowing! But uhm, seriously... did anyone think that maybe there should be some sort of regulation on private import of radioactive materials? Oh wait, there is...

FUD: It's what's for dinner.

[carbon16]

I have a tritium keychain that I imported from the UK that glows green 24/7. It's great, especially for finding keys in a dark backpack. I wish we could buy them here in the US, but the NRC has recently (in the past 10 years) passed a mandate that radioactive materials cannot be used for novelties. This was surely a "reduce the 'frivolous' approvals the NRC has to deal with"-based measure rather than a safety measure, since the safety risks are essentially zero (see below). Since Japan follows a monkey-see-monkey-do approach to the US with regard to their domestic nuclear regulation, Japan's regulatory agency (METI) surely followed suit and passed the same mandate verbatim.

The keychain is a 40 mm x ~10mm diameter acrylic fob with a 20 mm x ~4 mm phosphor-coated glass tube encased within, which contains maybe 20 micrograms of Hydrogen-3, aka tritium, which is a weak beta emitter. Beta particles are just high energy electrons - they generally don't even pass through the acrylic, and if they did they wouldn't penetrate our skin. I wouldn't recommend chewing and swallowing the glass tube, but then again I wouldn't recommend chewing and swallowing most things currently on my desk.

Yes, I work in the nuclear field in both the US and Japan. :-)