"Radiation does not make ordinary crap glow except in very rare cases"
The tritium is energizing a florescent compound. Not ordinary crap, but a very particular type of crap. Distinction was made. Florescence is a common enough occurrence that I would have suspected most folks reading this could make the leap to 'special category of substance'.
The 'very rare cases' are such as Cherenkov radiation (supraluminal photons shedding energy as the stabilize in a new medium), or when primary radiation causes nuclear destabilization to the point that it creates new radioactive atoms in the target. If there's enough of that that you can see a glow, you've almost certainly absorbed enough to be toast.
Neither applies in the case of food irradiation, and only someone who horribly flunked middle school science would think so.
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Date: 2007-10-26 01:47 am (UTC)The tritium is energizing a florescent compound. Not ordinary crap, but a very particular type of crap. Distinction was made. Florescence is a common enough occurrence that I would have suspected most folks reading this could make the leap to 'special category of substance'.
The 'very rare cases' are such as Cherenkov radiation (supraluminal photons shedding energy as the stabilize in a new medium), or when primary radiation causes nuclear destabilization to the point that it creates new radioactive atoms in the target. If there's enough of that that you can see a glow, you've almost certainly absorbed enough to be toast.
Neither applies in the case of food irradiation, and only someone who horribly flunked middle school science would think so.