One just fell down the staris and no longer works. I understand they contain small amounts of radioactive material - how should they be disposed of?
Also, after how long should they be replaced anyway?
Daniele
In message , D.M. Procida wrote
You should take it to a company licensed to dispose of radio-active waste - it should only cost you a few hundred GBP.
Alternatively do a s everyone else does and throw it into the bag with all your other household waste.
Give it back to the shop you bought it from? Or check your local council department on their disposal policy. Bet it ends up in landfill either way (but really, it shouldn't..)
Googling about seems to be 10 years. The Australians seem to be more up on this topic.
-- Adrian C
It probably doesn't work because the americium came out when it was bouncing down the stairs ;-)
Just kidding...
Er, how likely is it to have come out, and how nasty is it?
Daniele
As often as you think fit(within a 12 month period). Whats important, a buzzer costing a few quid or your family?
Pretty bad. It causes you to speak with a strange accent while believing that everybody else does, to use leverage as a verb and to mis-spell words like "colour" as "color".
AIUI, the radioactive material is very slight in both amount and risk, certainly nothing that should stop you chucking it in the bin - the plastic is more likely a greater hazard to the environment than the radioactive stuff. I'd certainly have no qualms about taking apart a smoke detector, if thats of any help?! (probably not!)
But, you know, what ever you see fit really.
Also:
Might find it interesting.
.... And bomb far off countries whilst citing claims that they have weapons of mass destruction ??? ...
Not very and not at all. Perhaps if you ate several hundred of them.
The returns department of our local IKEA has a recycling collection point that has a section for smoke alarms.
Probably just a bad solder joint or battery spring connector needing retensioning, but even though this is uk.d-i-y, it's barely worth the cost/risk of repairing (though I would try).
If it were that dangerous, they wouldn't be allowed in homes.
If you can easily find somewhere that accepts them (maybe along with general domestic electronics), do so, but it's not worth looking too hard.
We discussed this a while back. See
Chris
It is well inside the plastic cylinder bit. The amount of the material is really very very tiny. (Someone who is more up on working out radioactivity could tell you) - but I'd reckon on it being less than a spec.
I suspect that the only way you could get any harm from it is to eat it.
The plastic container is quite sufficient to entirely shield the radiation.
The element will decay in a few thousand years to Neptunium 237 which is well over a thousand times less radioactive!
I had a smoke alarm that had been replaced with a more up-to-date version. It still worked, so I took it down to Oxfam. They were happy to accept it since it was battery powered.
If you're not worried about bad karma then I guess they would accept a non working one as well since the people working in the shop don't do any point of collection testing. Maybe throw in an old fondu set or a collection of free wine glasses from a petrol station to keep them happy as well.
Just send it back to the supplier or manufacturer, their address should be inside the casing of the unit, or look their name up on the web.
Even if it comes from Tesco:
The MoD are very careful about them :) :
though it's permitted to chuck them in the bin after all:
or maybe it isn't:
Only the ionisation ones are radioactive, there should ba a label inside indicating if this is the case.
cheers, Pete.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.