how to dispose of tritium?

Midget

Midget

Gold Member
Joined
Jun 1, 2002
Messages
2,806
so i killed this old watch a little while back, and i haven't quite decided what to do with it. it feel it's not really worth it to send to a watchmaker to get fixed, especially because i have my new hamilton khaki and yao seiko to keep me company.


i'm trying to decide whether it's worth purchasing a new eta2801 movement + some hand removers and try my hand at some minor surgery.

it's either that, or find a way to dispose of it. the dial definately has some tritium on it, so i'm not just going to throw it in the trash.

so what's the environmentally responsible way to dispose of this thing?

that is, unless any of you want it...


it looks like this:

westcoastime_1859_991614


except... a whole lot more beat up.




so i'm tossing this back and forth in my head. i've taken this watch apart once already and am fairly familiar with all the guts. if i get a new ETA2801 movement and fudge up, i pretty much only lose the movement, because the watch was already broken. but if i win, i'll have my beater back.


what do you think?
 
on an unrelated note...

i have the original mineral crystal + stock dial of my seiko skx007 (yao supplies them to you when you get the custom equipment put in).

they're just sitting around in my toolbox. someone may as well get some use out of them.

they are up for grabs. rwan@umich.edu
 
In addition to what Mutt said ... it occurs to me that the half-life of tritium is about 11 years, and unless the watch goes through a trash compactor those vials should contain it a long time -- centuries. :cool:
 
MelancholyMutt said:
You just throw it away... at those concentrations, it's harmless.
Click to expand...
I used to work with radioactive material so dangerous that the brick wall caused a higher reading on a geiger counter. Tritum can be thrown away. There's no way the gov't would allow it to be public if it was even the slightest bit dangerous. They're pretty paranoid (but rightfully so) when it comes to radiation.
 
Midget said:
the dial definately has some tritium on it,
Click to expand...


The dial won't have tritium on it. Tritium is a gas. Furthermore, contrary to common misconception, tritium doesn't actually glow. Instead, to get light we have to use the radiation from the radioactive tritium gas to excite a phosphorescent material. To light a watch, tritium gas is put into a little vial of typically glass. The inside of the vial's walls are coated with a phosphorescent material. The little vial (or vials probably) will physically be behind the dial so the light is transmitted through the numerals. In the case of the hands, the vial is actually in the hand.

If the dial has a solid coating on it, it probably contains radium. Radium is a bit nastier, but the amount involved on a watch dial is very, very small.
 
Sometimes there is hazardous materials recycling around here. You bring in stuff that's not really good to chuck in a landfill like pesticides and batteries.

I'm not sure it's necessary in this case though. This is a pretty small quantity.
 
I should have realized it was tritium paint, would have if I'd looked at the picture -- LOL! Of course the same applies except it doesn't matter if it goes through a trash compactor (not that it would matter anyway....)

Chuck, radium paint hasn't been used in the West for a long time, though some of the communist countries used it only a few decades ago.
 
You still get more rads on a flight from New York to Los Angelas than you would if you ate the damn watch...
 
I agree with Gollnick. The material you see as "paint" is a phosphorescent material and the tritium vials are behind it.

The quantity of tritium is so small as to be regulated as an exempt source for radiaton. That is, it's exempt from the requirements because the quantity is so small. You can toss it into the trash with confidence you are not violating any regulations.

OTOH, if you make your repairs you'll have your old watch back.
 
alright, thanks for the advice everyone.


perhaps it's radium, not tritium. i can only tell you three things:

.on westcoastime it was advertised as tritium
.it definately glows independantly, i'm not mistaking it for luminova or anything
.it's painted. no tubes here.


you guys definately gave me peace of mind on the thing, although i'm not worried as much about violating regulations as i am about being environmentally conscious. i want to make sure what i'm doing is the right thing.



anyhow. i'll probably hang onto it for a little longer, get my hands on a new movement, and try my hand at some watch repair. but if not, i won't feel bad about tossing the whole project in the trash.

thanks guys.
 
Hey if you ever want to just toss it .. give me a shout.. I will be glad to take it off your hands.. I have a watch collection of working and also non working models.. I will even pay for shipping.,.

Thanks

~Jeff
Email: J.T.Porter@Gmail.Com

Also too add, Yea it is radium paint.. I read an article about where the women that were painting the watch dials were actually sticking the tips of there brushes into there mouths to shape the bristles and contracting some amounts of radiation .. can ya believe they would sctually put them in there mouths .. lol .. that is insane..
 
jefff said:
Also too add, Yea it is radium paint.. I read an article about where the women that were painting the watch dials were actually sticking the tips of there brushes into there mouths to shape the bristles and contracting some amounts of radiation .. can ya believe they would sctually put them in there mouths .. lol .. that is insane..
Click to expand...

In the past, many artists would get severe lead and cadmium poisoning from pointing their brushes this way. Van Gogh was believed to suffer from lead poisoning, which influenced some aspects of his artwork, such as the halos around lights and stars, which is a side effect of the lead poisoning.
 
It's not radium... radium has not been available for commercial applications for decades... and, while we're sitting here all speculating, I can tell with 99 percent certainty that if Bill Yao made it, it's Superluminova. He's not reckless enough to use anything dangerous.
 
This is cracking me up.... Just to clarify, tritium is an isotope of hydrogen. Although hydrogen is a gas in its pure state, it forms compounds which are not gases....

The whole question is moot since Superluminova does not contain tritium.... :cool:
 
It certainly isn't radium, unless that watch is from the beginning of the 20th century.
And about those women painting the radium on the dials (long, loooong ago), yes, that's true. They sucked on their brushes regularly, and as a result, many of them got throatcancer and/or the likes.
 
If it's not Chinese or Russian, it's probably standard lume paint, either super luminova, the older stuff (prometheum)
 
If you had a banana today you got more then any place you dump it would.


Zoo
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top