Radon, A Radioactive Gas, Healthy?...or Harmful.

[Music] today i'm in boulder montana to visit the free enterprise radon health mine you're thinking well what's radon radon's a radioactive gas and now you're probably thinking well what's healthy about a radioactive gas well it can actually be a form of pain relief for people that suffer from arthritis and rheumatism or migraines or asthma it's a form of radiation therapy and it's a form of radiation therapy that only exists in one state in the united states and that's in montana so this makes montana kind of unique and as the only state that allows people of their own free will to choose how to treat their pain by going down and breathing a radioactive gas here's the background radiation for reference in the parking lot of the radon health mine it's slightly higher due to the uranium in the ground originally this was a uranium mine but after some visitors to the mine started feeling better presumably from the radon gas more people wanted to see for themselves so in 1952 the owners repurposed this uranium mine into a radon health mine there are other radon health minds in the area with different concentrations of radon people have come from all over the world to visit the radon health mine and have been doing so for quite some time seeking a way to alleviate their pain and inflammation a short elevator trip down and you find yourself 87 feet underground in the first level of this radon health mine this is a level that has been made safe for people to visit and enjoy radon therapy radon gas and water are pumped out of the lower levels of the radon health mine and brought to the surface where people can take home radon infused water that may sound a little strange for people to drink water that is infused with radon but they say that drinking the radon water actually gives people the same effect as breathing the rate on gas radon gas doesn't have an odor to it it's one of the noble gases so it doesn't react with anything else so the free enterprise right on health mind has created a nice little environment down in the mind for people to experience radon therapy they have chairs and tables lazy boys and bench seats all up and down the mind for people to hang out and to just experience the radon therapy and so it's nice to see a place that they've tried to make as cozy as possible because most people think you know a mine isn't very cozy but they've made it a very well lit and they have a wi-fi down here so you actually be on your phone or computer or doing work remotely while experience radon therapy certain uranium deposits will glow a bright green when exposed to ultraviolet light this uranium deposit in the mine is what creates the radon gas through radioactive decay you can actually see the path the uranium deposit takes through the rock so i'm down in the warming room of the free enterprise right on health line this is an area that has been made to be warmer than the rest of the mine the mine is usually around 45 degrees fahrenheit which is pretty chilly for a lot of people but in here it's around 60 degrees fahrenheit because they have a heater and a plastic veil over the door so that kind of traps the heat in here and so a lot of people come to hang out in this area of the mine that either they didn't bring a jacket or uh you know that 45 degrees it's got a little too much bite on it for them another cool thing about the free enterprise radon health mine is the customer graffiti and basically on every wooden surface down in the mine there are people signing their names letting others know who came here before them and they usually put like a date and where they came from and so it's an interesting tapestry of the history of this place this room is for people that don't want to go down into the mine radon is pumped from the lower levels into this room for people to sit and relax and enjoy now there are other radon health minds in the world there are radon health minds actually in austria that have existed for over a hundred years uh back in the day they um you know back before the discovery of radon and radiation and radioactivity uh they discovered that there were mines and caves that when people went into that had arthritis or all types of other ailments that they actually experienced a form of pain relief from being down in these areas and it wasn't until later after the discovery of radioactivity and radium and radon that they put those two together and realize that people were experienced this pain relief because of the radiation that they were absorbing which is a very low dose of radiation in here right now the radiation on my geiger counter is around let's see here just needs to level out a little bit i'm going to turn off the clicker here so you can actually hear me talk but i'm getting around 1200 to 1300 counts per minute and that's pretty low and i've been down in here uh before uh with this not in a bag and it was given me around five to six thousand counts per minute and the reason why it's less right now is because all the uh alpha particles from the radon gas isn't able to penetrate this plastic back and so it cuts down a lot on the radiation that's detected and then the reason why i have this in a bag to begin with is so it doesn't become contaminated by the radon daughters that are in this mine the radon donors are actually other elements that radon turns into after it emits its radiation and those are negatively charged and so they will actually kind of stick to this and to myself and emit radiation for about 24 hours after i'm outside of this environment until i decay away into a more stable form of lead which is still radioactive but it's it's very low energy and usually if i wanted to decontaminate this or myself i just have to wipe this down and wipe off the detector and uh it would be fine same with yourself you would be fine too if you just took a shower and washed your clothes uh you know this isn't uh hurtful in any way so i just got out of the radon health mine and my geiger counter is reading about 280 right now 280 counts per minute when i put it onto my shirt here i'm getting around 3 000 now 2500 counts per minute that's just from the radioactive particles stuck to my shirt this was a look at how radon could be beneficial to some now we're going to go somewhere where i would consider it to be a little bit [Music] dangerous [Music] i'm out here at the movita mine in uh utah near moab and this mine is kind of interesting and it's interesting in that it contaminates you when you walk inside and i'm not sure if i feel up to it today so i think i'm going to stay out of there today did fly the drone around so you kind of get an idea of what it looks like um maybe next time i'll uh cruise in there and get myself dusted [Music] [Applause] [Music] i was just kidding i'm going to go in there um i am a little apprehensive about it because i am going to get contaminated with radioactive particles but those particles decay away in about 24 hours so it's not so bad i am going to be wearing a mask so i don't breathe those particles in now it is important to understand the difference of a mine like this versus the radon health mine in montana the level of radon and radon decay products that are coming out of this mine just in the air is massively different compared to the radon health mine and then the radon that you would find in your home but we'll see if this uh does what i think it's gonna do a bunch of bugs around here but uh so to get an idea the background right here i'm getting is 350 counts per minute so you can hear it there's contamination in this whole area my clothes right now nothing so we'll see if that's totally different when i come out i'm going to have to put this in a plastic bag because i if i bring it in there it'll be useless it'll be showing a super high reading no matter where i am so i don't want that so let's go inside and check it out coming to the portal of a mine yeah it's definitely going up hopefully i don't see any snakes so i can feel that air the air is totally clear it's cool but yeah it's super radioactive well 26 23 000 counts per minute [Music] i'm okay so there's a cool curtain of air coming out of that hole right now it's totally clean i can't see anything in the air it looks totally fine i will not create anything of this mind if i was in here just exploring i wouldn't think anything about this mind but it's contaminating me right now and my camera because of the radon daughter products that are in the air right now so this tiny particles of dust are adhering to me right now and they're emitting energy i will for about 24 hours and i wouldn't know this unless i had a geiger counter with me so let's turn this one back on and let's uh see what it's telling us here because it sounds like there's some pretty hot stuff around here yep it seems like a piece of ore but i pulled stuff out of here where it wasn't looks like it's going to be 90 90 counts per minute all right i think i'm gonna head out now let me grab this uh rock that's on the ground because it's here i'll see ya see you outside all right a little sample here super bright okay i'm outside of the mine now my geiger count is still going off i'm gonna take this mask off now [Music] all right i'm gonna put this mask down yeah it's still reading really hot right now so now it's outside of that bag i got your counter it's almost reading back to background but now [Music] not as bad as i thought it would be actually definitely contamination looks like it's lower getting about 11 000 11 000 counts per minute 12 000 counts per minute yeah i mean there's a difference there so i gotta wash my hands let's put it that way my fingertips are 13 000 counts per minute and it's i think it's because i picked up that rock and it had that radioactive dust on it so wow i have to show you my mask gain 65 000 counts per minute hopefully you can see that so the radioactive particles that were in the air was stopped by this filter probably not all of it i did probably breathe in some of it but this filter probably helped me a lot so i just changed out of my shirt here the one i was wearing that's got me around 28 27 29 000 counts per minute hopefully you can see that that's insane but in a day this shirt should be fine it shouldn't be radioactive anymore [Music] so [Music] so it's been about 24 hours now and this shirt has had some time to calm down a bit so now the radioactivity is far less and it is pretty much background and that's because of the daughter products have decayed away into a more stable form of lead which is still radioactive as a much longer half-life of around 22 years so there's still radioactive isotopes on here just not nearly as active as they once [Music] were i'm down in this crawl space to briefly talk about residential radon and right here i have a a radon meter that uh it detects uh radon gas and it uses uh picocuries per liter of air as a form of measurement and down here i'm getting around 18 carries per liter of air and a pico is one trillionth of a part so it's very very small and you know i mean it's something that it doesn't even really affect my geiger counter down here you know in the free enterprise rate on health mine this was giving me around uh five to six thousand counts per minute uh without it in a bag and at the mavita mine it was giving me around um you know like 35 000 to 80 000 counts per minute in a plastic bag uh but down here you know it's giving me you know between uh 50 and uh 70 counts per minute and normal background and so 35 counts per minute and so the level of radiation exposure from residential radon is extremely low and it shouldn't really be something that is um you know feared they say to mitigate your home if it's at uh four picocuries per liter of air of radon is detected and that's an extremely small amount of radon compared to all these other places that i've showed you and so it's something that um you know i mean if if you're honestly scared of of radon and radiation then then yeah go ahead get a get radon mitigation and pay those thousands of dollars and you know you have that peace of mind but um it'd be better to understand uh radiation and radon and the effects it has on the body instead of just uh you know subscribing to that fear of an element that i think they're really trying to sell people on this is like the lowest level of radon that you can possibly find is in the residential you know areas and then the health minds in montana the radon health wines in montana that's uh much higher and then the then there's like the movida mine and different uranium mines which have extremely high levels of radon which you know those are what i would consider to be a dangerous level of radon if you were going to be down there uh day in and day out mining and working as a miner then yeah that would be a dangerous level of radon if they didn't ventilate the mine and then also as i understand it the miners that did get cancer like lung cancer down there uh that they said was caused from radon they were also a lot of them were smokers and so it's you know i think a lot of people that are getting uh lung cancer that uh didn't smoke uh in their homes and they blame it on radon i think it's actually more from chemical exposure or from second-hand smoke or uh you know or bad air quality you know it really depends on a lot of factors and to say that it's just radon it just doesn't seem like a very like kind of genuine uh way of presenting the facts and that's what i'm hoping this video does is it kind of you know opens your eyes to um you know more information and how uh you know radon is all around us and you know radiation is all around us and it's not something that should be feared it should be something that's understood i understand that's really hard to do with an energy that you can't see you can't smell it you can only detect it with certain uh equipment and if it's high enough it can kill you and and so i understand the fear of that but it's it's something that can be understood and i think if it's understood it could be a lot more beneficial to people than if it's feared you know maybe radon therapy is for you maybe it isn't the effect that radiation has on every person is kind of different um you know some people uh are affected by it a lot easier than others and you know so maybe radon therapy isn't for you but if you are suffering from any of those ailments it might be something to try because the people that i've run into that have told me about their stories about uh you know suffering from arthritis and you know all kinds of other things then going down and breathing that rate on gas they definitely seem to have some type of pain relief from uh going down there and doing that and you know it's it's something to investigate further and i feel like um you know everyone's so wrapped up in radon causing lung cancer that no one wants to investigate the benefits of radon or that it could have some type of benefit i hope you learned something if you did please like or subscribe to this channel i plan on releasing a lot more videos about radiation radioactivity and different things that i do find out in the field because i find all types of objects uh places that are radioactive that people have no idea are and so it should be a fun journey and i'm hoping that um i get some more people to follow me on it so take it easy hope you learned something see you next time [Music] you

Channel: Radioactive Drew

Views: 107,602

Keywords: radiation, radioactive, radon, health, mines, montana, utah, uranium, geiger counter, radon gas, uranium mining, uranium mine, radioactive zone

Id: 7Jt4ZH2CgfY

Length: 24min 12sec (1452 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020