Beware the radioactive counter - countertop, that is

Check your new countertop, because it might be radioactive.  It's like a 1950s monster movie, with atomics invading domestic space:

“It’s not that all granite is dangerous,” said Stanley Liebert, the quality assurance director at CMT Laboratories in Clifton Park, N.Y., who took radiation measurements at Dr. Sugarman’s house. “But I’ve seen a few that might heat up your Cheerios a little.”

(via The Cranky Professor)

Comments

[peter naegele]

This made me chuckle...given that most rock gives off radiation in one form or another.

And lets not forget the dangers of nitrogen which, when bombarded by invisible solar radiation, transforms into radioactive carbon-14!!!! Also known as CO2.......

[Steven Kaye]

Indeed, I remember a Fu Manchu novel in which a scientist comments on the radioactivity of Manhattan bedrock (IIRC). Shadow of Fu Manchu, I think.

[Stephen Downes]

There's an issue about proposed Uranium mining in and around Moncton, so this story got some airplay here.

Andrea (my wife) has spent the last day or so tracking down sources, radioactive granite (you can generally tell because it's green), and the rest.

Consequently, she has been showing me different types of granite, radioactive and otherwise, and information about the study.

She tells me that the Chinese rate granite according to radioactivity (1-4, 4 being the most radioactive) but that there is no such rating system in North America (where you can still buy Chinese '4' granite).

But we both got our biggest chuckle when she found out that the study was sponsored by the slate countertop manufacturers (she said 'rock' but I assume slate).

Given that nothing on the market is going to do anyone the slightest bit of harm, we have both concluded that there is utterly nothing to this story.

It is - once again - a newspaper uncritically following up some advertising and marketing FUD.

[Eugene]

I am going to begin granite radioactivity control service, it should be profitable. Thanks for any suggestions.

[rate my wife]

this is kinda a scary. how could this happen.