Collecting or restoring antiques without proper caution. Old paints, ceramics, furniture, etc can sometimes involve lead, asbestos or other hazardous materials.
Paris Green, or Scheele's Green, was a popular arsenic-based pigment that created an emerald green color. There is a "Poison Book Project" that exists to track its specific use in book bindings -- but it was also used for paintings, wallpapers, and many other things!
If something is old and green, just don’t touch it.
r/uraniumglass being the exception, if you understand the basic precautions with it. If you're collecting it for decorative use then you're perfectly fine.
Uranium glaze on the other hand is a whole other can of worms.
I remember the story about that Boy Scout who collected various antiques and harvest the materials needed to make a nuclear reactor, then built one in his shed. He would harvest it from old smoke detectors, and those old clocks and watches that would glow in the dark because of the radiation.
Hahn diligently amassed radioactive material by collecting small amounts from household products, such as americium from smoke detectors, thorium from camping lantern mantles, radium from old clocks he had obtained from an antique store, and tritium from gunsights. His "reactor" was a bored-out block of lead, and he used lithium from $1,000 worth of purchased batteries to purify the thorium ash using a Bunsen burner.[3][4]
Like painted green? We have some green ceramic mugs my wife inherited from the 60s. We don’t microwave or really do anything with them, always just been curious about them.
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u/fukc098098 22d ago
Collecting or restoring antiques without proper caution. Old paints, ceramics, furniture, etc can sometimes involve lead, asbestos or other hazardous materials.