wdyorchid

The other day I search under my bed directly 5" below my pillow is a 1980s
smoke detector place their since 2002 of Dec. Would I develop a malignant
brain tumor since I noticed an ice pick headache on the left back of the head?
I've heard of people having stroke due to radiation exposure. Is that true?

-Wdy

jeff utz

Smoke detectors give off very weak gamma rays. (They also give off alpha
particles, but these would not penetrate the pillow). I doubt very much that
there would be enough radiation to cause cancer.

Jeff

stanbro

Jeff is right. Smoke detectors are not a big source of radiation unless you
decide to eat the little Americium disk inside, and even then it isn't clear
it would hurt you. Assuming you are in the United States and the smoke
detector is the usual Americium kind, here is what the EPA says:
How much radiation is in smoke detectors?
The radiation source in an ionization chamber detector is a very small
disc, about 3 to 5 millimeters in diameter, weighing about 0.5 gram. It is a
composite of americium-241 in a gold matrix. The average activity in a smoke
detector source is about one microcurie, 1 millionth of a curie.

Americium emits alpha particles and low energy gamma rays. It has a
half-life of about 432 years. The long half-life means that americium decays
very slowly, emitting very little radiation. At the end of the 10 year
useful life of the smoke detector, it retains essentially all its original
activity.

How much radiation exposure will I get from a smoke detector?
As long as the radiation source stays in the detector, exposures would be
negligible (less than about 1/100 of a millirem per year), since alpha
particles cannot travel very far or penetrate even a single sheet of paper,
and the gamma rays emitted by americium are relatively weak. If the source
were removed, it would be very easy for a small child to swallow, but even
then exposures would be very low because the source would pass through the
body fairly rapidly (by contrast, the same amount of americium in a loose
powdered form would give a significant dose if swallowed or inhaled). Still,
its not a good idea to separate the source from the detector apparatus.

http://www.epa.gov/radiation/sources/smoke_alarm.htm

The skull is excellent protection against external radiation sources and as
Jeff says, even a sheet of paper will stop alpha particles. You get more
gammas and betas from the natural radioactivity in your house than you will
from this smoke detector. The cinder blocks in an average ba*****t produce
something like 75 millirems a year of radiation from the natural materials
in them, so the hundredth of one millirem from the smoke detector is nothing
in comparison. You get more irradiation to your brain from the natural
potassium and carbon radioisotopes in your own body than you do from a smoke
detector:
Small traces of many radioactive materials are present in the human body.
These come mainly from radioactivity present in minute quantities in the
food we eat.
The only radionuclide which gives a significant dose is K. A person
weighing contains of potassium, most of which is located in the muscle.
About 0.01% of this is K and this delivers an equivalent dose of about a
year. C which is produced through nuclear transmutation by cosmic rays
in the upper atmosphere, delivers about a year.

http://www.triumf.ca/safety/rpt/rpt_4/node7.html

( 0.2 mSV a year = 20 millirems a year)

Even people who were injected with the radioactive contrast material
Thorotrast and had the misfortune to have some of it seep outside their
blood vessels and lodge in their brains did not always develop brain tumors,
and if they did, it usually took between 20 and 40 years for the tumors to
develop, so you wouldn't have gotten one this quickly in any case.

As for strokes from radiation exposure, the only cases I could find of this
were in people who had such large doses of radiotherapy in the head or neck
region that it damaged the arteries there, leading to an eventual blockage
and stroke.

So try to sleep peacefully despite the smoke detector (why was it hidden
under the bed? From the 5", it sounds as if it must have been attached to
the bottom of the boxspring or to the bed slats. This seems very odd, since
smoke rises and one would think it should have been placed on the
ceiling......).

Sweet dreams,

Helen S.

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stanbro

Sorry--it looks like the numerals in the ref about natural human body
radioactivity did not transmit properly in this format. They seem to appear
as attachments for some reason. The statement should read:


the muscle.

about 0.2 mSV a

rays

steph

No

wdyorchid

0.2 mSV a year sound very small. Thanks for the good news everyone. There were
no battery inside. I think I'm healing already since I'd last read both your
posts because the posts are full of good news. The detector and pillow was
between a 3/4" saw dust particle board. It sounds like radiation might have not
pass thru the board after all. Thanks.
-Wd