Granite will kill you! I'm cereal.
Posted on 07/29/2008 6:25:01 AM PDT by fight_truth_decay
Radiation Fears Lead Homeowners to Request Inspection; Most Cite Little Cause for Concern
When Stephen Gladstone read reports last week that granite countertops may be a source of potentially harmful levels of radiation, two concerns immediately entered his mind.
The first had to do with the generous 7-foot-by-6-foot slab of granite covering the central island in his own kitchen.
The second had to do with the flood of phone calls he knew he would be receiving in the following days as a result of the news.
Gladstone is chief inspector and president of Stonehollow Home Inspection in Stamford, Conn., and former president of the American Society of Home Inspectors. And he says that since an article last Thursday in the New York Times cited the potential radiation and radon gas hazards associated with granite countertops, calls from concerned homeowners have spiked.
"We've opened up a can of worms," he says. "In the last three days, I have gotten at least 11 calls and six or seven emails from clients who want to know what they should do."
One such call was from a pregnant mother who had been serving her kids' meals on granite countertops she had installed in December. Another was from a homeowner who was in the process of buying a $10,000 slab of Brazilian granite who wanted to have it tested before it was delivered to her home.
Gladstone says panic among homeowners is premature. Still, he notes in his blog, when he told his wife about the article in the Times, "it wasn't long before one of my radon machines was sitting on the granite and the radon test was under way."
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
http://www.marble-institute.com/industryresources/granite_radoninfo.cfm
(source above permitted link only)
Re: Granite Media Scare
It’s such B.S.
I imagine flying twice a year would give you about 100 years worth of radon exposure.
Remember the Alar scare? They were getting their knickers in knots over PARTS PER BILLION.
Odds are you’d get hit by lightning after being torn apart by a pack of wild mongooses before you’d die from eating a freakin apple...
People need to get a grip, fer cryin out loud.
Well, I am limiting my diet to items on the McDonalds Dollar Value Menu, just to be on the safe side!
Hey, I NEVER said Mickey D’s won’t kill ya!!
;-)
Cue Joe Jackson’s “Everything Gives You Cancer.”
I know people like this who go through life wringing their hands endlessly and, of course, wanting everyone to do without if it means just one life is saved. Feh.
I will take it for granite that my granite counter tops are safe.
Granite? Radiation? OMG!!!! I got an idea America! Let’s all live on the prarie in huts made of air, since we can’t use wood, mud or brick for walls, and WALK everywhere.
Wait til we measure parts per trillion! What fun then. Find an atom of mercury in the tuna and millions will get the vapors. California will be able to catch an atom of something, anything drifting on the air and pass dozens of laws to prevent and compensate the damaged. What a world!
Don’t worry.
I will be glad to take an entire custom kitchen off someone’s hands.
Hey, just doing my part to assuage irrational fears.
Thank you, NEA, for the scientific illiteracy you’ve achieved over America.
Parts per billion CAN be lethal. . .of certain especially potent toxins. But very little else.
It’s like the stunt where Penn and Teller had a girl go through an environmental rally, and got hundreds of signatures on a petition to ban dihydrogen monoxide. . .
Go go irrational fears !!
(laughs)
It is natural stone. The earth gives off radiation. There is constant background radiation around us. Of course granite or marble is going to give off radon and radiation. The question is whether the level is of any significance. It certainly is, as a physics professor of mine once said of living near a nuclear power plant, of a significant lower degree than living in the Rockies or flying in a plane.
In New England, many granites contain 1.5-2.0 PicoCuries/Gram of uranium and thorium.
So..people live on a foundation made of concrete containing peastone and gravel from the local geology, drink water from deep artesian wells drilled in granites or pegmatites and take showers in the radon seltzer water, work in buildings made of granite, or live in older houses with rubble foundations-THEN throw away a $10,000 countertop because it "might be atomic or something".
I imagine them sitting at the new Corian countop, smoking cigarettes and eating vegetabls grown with superphosphate fertilizers that contain Polonium 210.
A fool and his money, etc.
A small bit of radiation is probably good for you. Keeps the repair mechanisms in our body functioning. I get such a laugh out of the radon scare people (my father-in-law included)
When he gets started on the indoor air pollution thing, I like to ask him how the human race survived prior to air filters & the like. Then I tell him “That which does not kill you makes you stronger”
He doesn’t talk to me about indoor air pollution any more, :-)
My money is still on the lightning and marauding mongooses!
Yes, PPB can do it. Some neurotoxins and a few others. But not much. For instance, it’s like whether plants are edible or not. In fact 96 percent or so of plants are edible, even if not very palatable.
But there’s that one or two percent that if you have them for dinner, you don’t have to worry about breakfast! Ever.
Air has large concentrations of poisonous CO2. Water is toxic, too, btw, in certain concentrations.
Granite will kill you! I'm cereal.
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