{"id":33440,"date":"2023-09-07T19:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/9f6ddb95-42c1-481d-a8ec-42adee259492"},"modified":"2023-09-07T19:46:14","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T17:46:14","slug":"your-house-is-surprisingly-radioactive-here-are-the-appliances-to-blame","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/rss_feed\/your-house-is-surprisingly-radioactive-here-are-the-appliances-to-blame\/","title":{"rendered":"Your house is surprisingly radioactive. Here are the appliances to blame"},"content":{"rendered":"

Homeware, foods and even where you live can expose you to different amounts of radiation. <\/p>

By Luis Villazon\n <\/p>

Published: Thursday, 07 September 2023 at 17:00 PM<\/p>

\n\n

Your house is surprisingly radioactive. Here are the appliances to blame<\/h1>

Pedantically, we could say that your house is literally bathed in radiation day and night, since visible light is radiation, and so are the infrared wavelengths coming from your radiators and the 2.4GHz frequency radio waves from your home\u00a0Wi-Fi\u00a0and mobile phone. <\/p>

But what\u00a0you\u2019re probably referring to is ionising radiation \u2013 the kind powerful enough to knock electrons out of atoms and thereby cause cancer and, at very high doses, radiation poisoning and burns.<\/p>

Old-fashioned\u00a0cathode-ray tube monitors used to be a low-level source of ionising X-rays, but these have virtually all been replaced with flat-screen monitors, which don\u2019t emit X-rays. So the remaining domestic sources of radiation are mostly things that contain small amounts of radioactive elements. Bananas, for example,\u00a0contain enough of the isotope potassium-40 that eating one gives you 0.0001 millisieverts (mSv)\u00a0\u2013\u00a0roughly the same radiation dose as living within 80km\u00a0(50 miles)\u00a0of a nuclear power plant (in other words, virtually none).\u00a0<\/p>

Brazil nuts are about five times more radioactive as a result of the very deep roots of Brazil nut trees that concentrate radioactive radium in the soil. But eating\u00a0two or three Brazil nuts\u00a0a\u00a0day is still perfectly safe.<\/p>

Smoking is already very bad for your health of course, but it\u2019s made slightly worse by the fact that the fertilisers used on tobacco plants contain radioactive radium, lead and polonium, making a single cigarette as radioactive as seven bananas.<\/p>

Smoke detectors contain tiny amounts of the isotope americium-241. Americium emits radiation by alpha decay, which can be completely blocked by as little as a sheet of paper so it never escapes the smoke detector case and would only be a health hazard if you ate it.<\/p>

Speaking of eating, some ceramic plates and cups made between the 1930s and 1970s used uranium oxide glazes. Eating or drinking from these was roughly equivalent to eating\u00a0one\u00a0banana an hour.<\/p>

But if you mean how radioactive is\u00a0your\u00a0house, specifically (as in the building in which you reside), well that depends on where you live.\u00a0If you live in the Southwest of England, then\u00a0the largest source of the radiation in your home by far is the granite beneath it.<\/p>

Granite naturally contains some uranium, and this undergoes radioactive decay to form radium and then radon gas. This gas seeps slowly into the air and, because it emits alpha radiation, can increase the risk of lung cancer if the concentration is allowed to rise.\u00a0<\/p>

In parts of the UK with lots of granite, such as Cornwall, the background dose can be 7.8mSv per year (78,000 bananas).\u00a0The health risks of radon in the home can be greatly reduced by improving ventilation, particularly in basements, to prevent the radon gas concentration\u00a0from\u00a0building up.<\/p>

Radiation dose also increases with altitude, because there\u2019s less atmosphere between you and the cosmic rays bombarding Earth from space. Each day you spend in Denver, Colorado (altitude 1,600m\/5,200ft) gives you an extra 12 bananas worth of radiation, while a single transatlantic plane flight will give you about 0.04mSv of radiation (400 bananas).\u00a0<\/p>

If you\u2019re lucky enough to\u00a0be one of the astronauts that\u00a0calls\u00a0the International Space Station home, a six-month\u00a0stay up there\u00a0would add another 80mSv. Which is quite a lot, but still better for your health than eating 800,000 bananas!\u00a0<\/p>

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