Luminous iPods, safe?

[dave]

I see some iPods can have "latex" type skins that clip over them. Some of these are highly luminous. Is there a health risk from whatever the glowy stuff is? (maybe just paranoia - but pays to know)

[Gordon Henderson]

They're photoluminescent materials - "light stores". The material is mostly inert, so maybe harmful if you eat a lot of it and choke...

They absorb light, then give it off later, rather than being chemically activated like "night sticks" or radiactive...

See here:

here: have a torch with a rubbery shroud that glows with this stuff, but it needs to have been exposed to itself or daylight before it glows for any length of time.

Gordon

[Adam Aglionby]

Strontium aluminate is the modern GID substance, completely non radioactive and with a visible glow time typically in excess of 8 hours, zinc sulphide is the older GID material with a glow time lucky to stretch to 30 mins again completely non radioactive.

Tritium glow rings, keyring phial of tritium in phosphor coated tube , are radioactive but very weakly , it dosent escape the confines of its glass tube.Banned from sale in US because tritium is an acelerator in a hydrogen bomb.Though US sources its tritium from UK`s Calderhall reactor as US don`t still have facilities.

Radium was the WW1/II GID substance that leaves a toxic legacy everywhere, girls who worked with it frequently died of mouth cancer beacuse they licked the paint brushes to a point befor applying it to aircraft dials etc, it turms up as a radioactive hazard in all sorts of places from manufacture and scrap, radioactive spots were found on Dalgety Bay shore on the Forth..

Also used as excuse for radioactive spots, Woolwich Arsenal had a radioactive cleanup blamed on radium, reality was irrradited body parts buried on site, that had been obtained from local teaching hospitals for examination of radiation effects, but buried aircraft dials sounds better than radioactive body bits.

Adam