Happy Father's Day - 2011

And to my dad: I wish you a special and happy day. Thanks for being my father.

Crazy, unnatural radar patterns are emerging around the world.

Could man create destructive weather?  Scientists from generations ago, like Tesla, said “yes”.

This spring has been one of the most notable ones for me for weather. In my local area, we had two deadly storms, causing massive property damage. The wind has been so strong this spring that my wind turbine’s charge controller got fried. (I think the fuse burned up from too much wind energy giving a surge of electrical current.) My fence was blown apart by wind. My garden was pounded twice with hail. Temperatures are cooler than normal… one of the few good parts of this spring. And now, I’m seeing strange sights on radar images available on the Internet.

Strange radar circle in North Dakota on May-28-2011.

North Dakota, one day later, with strong storms. May-29-2011. Two strong cells shown. One of them is located where the empty circle was shown the day before.

A radar pattern has emerged. If a circle is formed in the radar images, with missing activity in the center of the circle, then 24~48 hours later a strong, damaging storm will hit that circle.

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Here is what Michigan looked like on May-29-2011, 9:30 PM EST…

Strong cells, thunderstorms and hail head towards the center of the radar ring spotted the night before.

Another circle appears over Michigan. Why is the center of the circle empty?

‘Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of Electro-Magnetic waves.  So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations.  It’s real…’

- Secretary of Defense William Cohen, 1997 Counterterrorism Conference, Athens, Georgia.

Source

Questions

What is the source of the energy?

Are the rings man-made?

Are the circles made by electromagnetic radiation punching up into the ionosphere?  (And then storm clouds rush in to fill that void?)

Why is it so easy to predict where storms will go 24~48 hours from now by simply watching for the radar rings?

Idea

If you are concerned about the weather, have you considered praying?  (This idea is only for those that have the light. If you are blind, this will mean nothing to you.) God might answer our prayers if we ask for help with the weather.  I have been praying for rain to protect people’s homes from fire and to give farms and gardens needed water to grow food.  God answered my prayers three times so far this summer regarding the weather and each time, the weather deviated greatly from what the weather forecasters predicted.  God showed them he is in control, not the weather forecasters!  Coincidence?  It’s hard to prove or disprove.  The video below shows how beautiful the weather turned out, varying greatly for the better from what weather forecasters predicted.  How could the forecasts be so wrong?  Was it God answering prayer?

VIDEO

Do smoke alarms cause cancer?

Smoke alarms using ionization have a radioactive waste product inside called Americium-241.  (Smoke alarms are sometimes called smoke detectors or fire alarms.)  The back of one alarm has this label:

Label on back of First Alarm smoke alarm.

First, the good news:  Smoke alarms are available with no radioactive material.  There are two different kinds of smoke alarms:  ionization and photoelectric.  The only one that has radioactive waste inside is the ionization kind. If you want to skip the worries, just get a photoelectric smoke alarm.

Photoelectric smoke alarms are safer in regards to radiation.

Photoelectric smoke alarms have no radioactive material.

Ionization smoke alarms contain radioactive material: Americium-241

Cancer Risk?

My main concerns, in order of importance:

1. Ingesting Americium
2. Inhaling Americium
3. Gamma rays emitted by Americium

Ingesting Americium

When it’s time for these smoke detectors to go in the trash, they are either dumped into a landfill or incinerated. The material could be crushed in a trash compactor and released from its container.  The Americium-241, which remains radioactive for many hundreds of years, could then enter the water supply or the air.  Animals could eat this stuff, drink it, breathe it, and then it’s in the food chain.  I’m really surprised our government allows this.

Inhaling Americium

A study in 1985 indicated that if humans inhaled Americium-241, they would have a significant risk of developing bone tumors.  [ Pubmed ]

If my house catches on fire and the smoke alarm catches on fire, could the Americium-241 be released into the smoke and get inhaled by anyone still inside the house or close-by outside the house?  Could firefighters be exposed to Americium-241 from burning smoke alarms?

Another danger would be at incinerators.  When these smoke alarms are thrown in the trash and burned in an incinerator, the toxic Americium-241 could be vaporized into the air and inhaled.  The temperature required to vaporize Americium is 2,011 C.  That’s super hot.  I found evidence online that some people want incinerators to burn at 2,500 C.  That would be hot enough to vaporize Americium, which then goes into the air.  It looks possible to me that Americium could get into the air through incinerators.

Irresponsible

People that work in these smoke alarm companies know the risks better than the average citizen.  I believe it is environmentally irresponsible for companies that know these risks to be using radioactive material inside their products.  The material doesn’t just sit inside the plastic container undisturbed for the next 500 years while the radioactive material breaks down.  Millions of these plastic smoke alarm cases will be buried in the ground, burned in fires, make their way into water supplies, and be completely incorporated into the food chain before 500 years has passed.  I believe these products are and will be poisoning our food chain for hundreds of years to come.  Why is this tolerated and allowed by our government?

Gamma rays emitted by Americium

Certain kinds of radiation are carcinogens:  x-rays and gamma rays.  [ Source:  NIH PDF file ]

Gamma radiation is “the most dangerous form of radiation emitted by a nuclear explosion because of the difficulty in stopping it. Gamma radiation is not stopped by the skin.”  [newworldencyclopedia.org]

Ionization smoke alarms produce 1% of their radiation as gamma rays.  Argonne National Laboratory [PDF file] says that Americium-241 produces 33,000 eV (electronvolts) of gamma rays.  The CDC says Americium-241 emits weak gamma radiation.  Is it enough to increase our chances of cancer?

“Americium-241 decays by alpha emission, with a by-product of gamma rays.”  Since ionization smoke alarms contain Americium-241, that means they produce gamma rays.  “High levels of gamma rays can produce dangerous ionization of the tissue and can cause skin cancer.”  [hesston.edu]  What is a high level of gamma rays?  Wish I had some numbers.

Safety Contradictions

Are ionization smoke alarms safe?  It depends on which government you ask and in what context.  Australia’s EPA says the radiation “level is very low and does not constitute a hazard to people or the environment.”  [PDF]  But it was not legal to dispose of smoke alarms into Australia’s landfills until 2009.  So up until 2009, they seemed to think these smoke alarms were too toxic to put in landfills.  Their new rule is no more than 2 smoke alarms can be disposed of in domestic waste bins each week.  If this stuff is so safe, why is there a strict limit on how many smoke alarms can go in the landfill?

I have 8 smoke alarms in my house now, much more than the limit Australia set for disposal in a week.  Should I be alarmed by the smoke alarm?

Australia’s government doesn’t make me feel much better with another rule about smoke alarm disposal.  When more than ten smoke alarms are collected together for bulk disposal, they must be treated as “radioactive waste”.  [arpansa.gov.au]  How dangerous is this stuff?

The UK government has legislation that states you can only dispose of one of these smoke alarms per dustbin or refuse sack.  [nhhwf.org.uk]  If it’s so safe, why this legislation?  They seem more concerned for the landfills than for the households.

If you send your smoke alarm back to the manufacturer in the United States, they are required by the Nuclear Regulatory law to see that the radioactive waste is disposed at a nuclear waste disposal facility.  That doesn’t give me a warm and fuzzy feeling about the alarms in my house.

The German government outlawed the ionization smoke detectors because they would lead to radioactive contamination when the house burns down or even worse, a factory, store, or storage location with hundreds of smoke detectors .

Where does Americium-241 come from?

The Department of Energy says it is the most common waste product from sites like the Hanford Nuclear Waste Site.

Image from businessweek.com.

Does this mean I paid money for a smoke alarm that contains toxic waste?  That seems ironic that I paid money to install eight such devices inside my house under the idea that I was keeping my family safe.

How Much Gamma Radiation do Smoke Alarms Emit?

OK, remember that when the smoke alarm is brand new, with the radioactive material inside the plastic case, this is as good as it gets.  This alarm will not still be in your house in 10 years or so.  But the radioactive material will continue to be hazardous if consumed by mouth or by inhalation for hundreds of years!  But, let’s look at the safety when the alarm is brand new and perched quietly on walls and ceilings.  Is it safe for us to have this material inside our house, to be subjected to its radiation, year after year?

The radioactive material interacts freely with the air in order to detect smoke.

Inside an ionization smoke alarm.

The open slots let smoke in and out.  The same slots allow gamma radiation to escape, which is not stopped by the flimsy plastic case.

Ionization chamber from another smoke alarm showing open slots where air moves freely in and out, also allowing gamma rays out.

In order for the radioactive material to work at helping detect a fire, it must interact with the air.  By design, the radioactive material must be able to interact with the air in the room it is installed.  Air passively moves through the room and into the slots of the radioactive chamber.  That same air then passes back into the room.  The slots let air in and out, smoke in and out, and radiation in and out.  Radiation escapes through the open slots and into the room.

How Much Gamma Radiation Is Normal?

The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) says (on  page 93) that the annual radiation dose = 0.48 mSv.  We can convert this.

UNSCEAR says normal background radiation is

0.05 uSv/hour

The EPA says normal background radiation is 620 millirem/year.  (Source)  We can convert.

EPA says normal background radiation =

0.7  uSV/hour

China’s Ministry of Environmental Protection (MEP) says normal background radiation in their country is less.

MEP says normal background radiation is up to

0.2 uSV/hour

The three sources above vary a bit, but I think it is safe to say normal background radiation is less than 1 uSv/hour.

(If you want to have more of a comparison, there is an unofficial chart showing how different radiation sources compare.  nutritioneer.net.)

What is the Minimum Amount of Gamma Radiation That Causes Cancer?

The lowest limit of radiation thought to cause cancer is 100 mSv in a single dose.    When 100 mSv is delivered in a single dose, that radiation increases the risk of developing cancer by 1%.  This figure is from studying the survivors of the atomic bombs dropped in Japan.  This means that when the Japanese people were exposed to 100 mSv in a single dose, one out of a hundred people developed cancer.  Of course, the radiation level varied greatly depending on the distance from the explosions.  [ Sources:  Youtube, users.rcn.com ]

Protective measures should be taken when the radiation dose reaches:

100 uSv/hr  OR 0.1 mSv/hr

Now if we could measure the amount emitted by a smoke alarm, we could have a comparison.

Testing the radiation level of a smoke alarm with a dosimeter.

bionerd23 (on Youtube), tested the radiation level of a smoke alarm using a Gamma Scout dosimeter.  With the dosimeter directly on top of the Americium-241, she measured the Gamma radiation to be 1.6 microSv/hour, which is about 14 mSv/year.

How does this compare with the normal radiation?

32 times greater than what UNSCEAR says is normal.

8 times greater than what MEP says is normal.

2 times greater than what EPA says is normal.

But that’s with the Americium-241 sample directly in contact with the dosimeter.  And that’s a key point, so we should not panic.  I guess the level of Gamma rays coming out of a smoke alarm is not a serious cancer threat as long as your body is a few feet away from the smoke alarm.

bionerd23 says that the radiation level is “not measurable on the outside if the smoke detector is intact – well, its not possible to tell it apart from normal background radiation, anyway. thus, you will not get exposed to ionizing radiation from smoke detectors in your home.”  Well, this sounds good.  So maybe my concern #3 is not a big threat.  What about the first two threats?

Ingesting Americium-241
Inhaling Americium-241

I found some interesting information at http://www.uic.com.au/nip35.htm – but that page is now gone.

They said that Americium in a detector is present in oxide form and that this form is not soluble in water.  If this is true, why don’t they say that on the warning label on the back of the alarms?  The warning label says it contains “Americium-241″.  Why don’t they say “Americium-241 Dioxide”?

The radiation level from the smoke alarm material is 60 keV, giving a dose at 1 metre of 0.0011 mSv/yr.  That looks negligible, as long as you are a meter away.  I think the radiation level follows an exponential curve.  The closer you get, the higher the radiation and it increases exponentially.

The offline page also said swallowing the radioactive material from a smoke detector would not lead to significant internal absorption of Am-241, since the dioxide is insoluble. It will pass through the digestive tract, without delivering a significant radiation dose.  If the above is true, then I feel much better.  (Americium-241 is however a potentially dangerous isotope if it is taken into the body in soluble form. It decays by both alpha activity and gamma emissions and it would concentrate in the skeleton.)

However, why use radioactive material at all if there is a competing technology that has been shown to be better at detecting smoke?

Less Toxic Choice:  Photoelectric

There are two competing technologies for smoke alarms:  ionization and photoelectric.  The less toxic choice is photoelectric as it has no radioactive material inside.  But are photoelectric smoke alarms as effective?  They might be better, actually.

According to Firesafetycouncil.com:  “Ionization sensors may respond slightly faster to flaming fires, whereas photoelectric sensors may respond slightly faster to smouldering fires.”  [PDF]  Notice they use the word “may”.  Well, hasn’t anyone tested this?  Why isn’t there conclusive information?  If there isn’t conclusive information, then why would I want radioactive material inside my house when I could use the non-radioactive photoelectric smoke alarms?  (I do not put a lot of trust in Firesafetycouncil.com as they are sponsored by a smoke alarm manufacturer:  Kidde, which might make them biased.)

Photoelectric Advantages

Photoelectric has the advantage of being non-radioactive.  That’s a super big plus to me.  I want our children and their children to have a clean planet.

Photoelectric alarms might produce less nuisance alarms.  “Installing a photoelectric smoke alarm instead of an ionization smoke alarm may be one approach to reducing nuisance alarms.” – Firesafetycouncil.com

“Photoelectric smoke alarms are excellent choices outside kitchens.”  — Firesafetycouncil.com

Photoelectric sensors may respond slightly faster to smoldering fires.  — Firesafetycouncil.com

“Photoelectric models are best suited for living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens. This is because these rooms often contain large pieces of furniture, such as sofas, chairs, mattresses, counter tops, etc. which will burn slowly and create more smouldering smoke than flames.” — Firesafetycouncil.com

In a study by “13 Investigates“, they found that a photoelectric smoke alarm detected smoke while an ionization smoke alarm failed.  To make matters worse, the ionization alarm also produced false alarms when they were cooking toast in the kitchen.  Photoelectric was the clear winner in their tests and ionization was the clear loser.

Photoelectric is the technology required by the state of Vermont after a family in that state burned in their home.  Their ionization smoke alarm never made a sound because it did not detect smoke.  Because the ionization alarm was blamed for the deaths, Vermont’s state government now requires photoelectric alarms be installed in all new homes.  — iaff.org

Photoelectric alarms are better at detecting smoke.  According to a law firm, “Ionization technology does not respond fast or at all to slow smoldering, smoky fires which are the most common types of residential fires.”

“Children were killed – because their families relied on ionization smoke alarms.”  Video

I see no compelling reason to choose the radioactive ionization smoke alarms.  Photoelectric sounds like the better technology to me.

For added security, you could also install heat sensors and CO (Carbon Monoxide) sensors.  I have one in my bedroom.  But it is clear to me that photoelectric sensors are the best choice for detecting smoke and for reducing the spread of radioactive waste across our land and in our food chain.

Questions

Has anyone tested ionization smoke alarms on lab animals to see if they have an increased chance of cancer?  Or are we the ones being tested?

This First Alert smoke alarm has both technologies: photoelectric and ionization.

Conclusion

I cannot find solid, scientific evidence showing that radioactive ionization smoke alarms are safe.  I found no studies showing how ionization alarms could affect our chance of cancer.  I cannot find solid evidence showing that ionization alarms are even necessary.  I have made the personal choice to replace the smoke alarms in my house with photoelectric.

-

Further Reading (for me)

http://world-nuclear.org/info/

Scrap CRT TV lying on the ground produces electricity as it rusts.

I connected a Joule Thief to the scrap TV lying on the ground and had some luck generating a tiny amount of power from it.  This method of generating electricity uses the principle of a Galvanic cell.

With this setup, I was able to capture enough energy to light a white LED.

The LED blinked when connected to the scrap metal and a Joule Thief.

The goal of this experiment was to prove to myself that discarded metal can make electricity as it rusts, corrodes, and oxidizes outside.

VIDEO

Questions

Where does that energy go if I’m not connecting a circuit to it, but the metal is still being oxidized?  (One guess:  The energy goes through water vapor in the air to complete the circuit, acting like electrolysis, making Hydrogen and Oxygen?  This would be more likely on humid days and when it is raining.)

Other Ideas

• Add more capacitors in parallel to see if I could store up more power to increase the duration of the LED blinks.

• Add a photosensor so that the circuit turns on only at night.  The circuit could store the energy during the day and use it up for a short duration of power at night.  The photosensor could be a photoresistor or phototransistor.

• Instead of using the ground as the electrolyte, use a container of salt water with part of the TV making contact with that liquid and the other metal dipped into the liquid.

Related Posts

More on the Joule Thief shown in the video:  Rubber Band Joule Thief

How to make a Joule Thief (includes circuit diagram)

More on how I salvaged parts from the broken TV:  Salvaging electronics from a broken TV

The results of using hydrolysis to help clean the burned pot.

I wondered if hydrolysis would help clean this mess.  A 12V solar panel supplied the power.

Hydrolysis then produced Hydrogen gas bubbles on the surface of the metal pot, helping to loosen the burned debris.

VIDEO

I find it interesting that one terminal gets oxidized and ruined at the expense of cleaning the other terminal.

Oxidized positive terminal from this hydrolysis experiment.

Close-up of same terminal.

Rust as Fertilizer

Rust is a form of Iron and is taken up by plants and nourishes them.  Some people buy fertilizer with Iron in it.  Plants gain a richer green color from Iron.  One idea I have is to purposely oxidize scrap metal and pour the rust as a supplement into my garden beds or compost pile.  It seems better than throwing the scrap metal into a landfill where it is wasted.

Conclusion

My observation is that about an hour of hydrolysis is sufficient to loosen the burned food so that the rest can be scrubbed off with ease.

When shopping for a solar panel and you are comparing models from competing sources, there are probably two main considerations:

1.  Quality

2.  Price

You are on your own for comparing the quality of the solar panels.  But for price comparisons, I found a helpful website I would like to share, that shows the going rate for solar panels.

According to SolarBuzz.com, the current price per Watt in the United States is:

$3.47 per Watt

A friend in Texas told me he has an opportunity to buy a 220 Watt solar panel for $450.  Is this a good deal?

Let’s calculate the cost per watt so we can see if it is more or less than the going rate.

Since the going rate is $3.47 per Watt, this deal in Texas, at $2.05 per Watt, looks to be priced cheaply.

Price isn’t everything, though.  We also should look at the quality.  If you find or know of a good resource for comparing quality, let me know.

Update March 22, 2011

The price per Watt is still dropping.  It is now down to $3.19 per Watt in the United States.  It is getting easier and easier to use solar energy.

Video after the break…

This post shows the progress in my solar panel installation.

Electrical cable and conduit going into the ground.

Put a hole in my garage wall. Now the electrical cable goes from the solar panel directly into the house. Connected the cable to a charge controller, portable 12V battery, and a strip of blue LED’s.

I leave the LED’s on 24 hours a day. It feels good to know I don’t pay a utility company for that use. It’s paid for and uses clean energy.

This video is a compilation of several days of work, whenever I could find some spare time.

VIDEO

RELATED

Mounting Solar Panel to Pole

Human-Powered Carousel

Man lifts about 300 pounds over his head with ease, as shown in the video…

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As the rope gets wrapped around the pole, the weights, in this case children and wood, are raised up.

When the man lets go, the weight lowers, spinning around the pole. When the weight gets to the bottom, the momentum keeps it moving so that the children go back up the pole a fraction of the original height.

No motors, no electricity, no fuel… just human muscle.

Instead of raising children up in the air, this could be modified to lift other heavy objects.

Perhaps the wind could be used to lift heavy objects. If a vertical axis wind turbine were connected to the center pole, it could lift objects up.

Some day if I find the time, I would like to build one of these.

Thief

Video attached…

VIDEO

A single contrail probably does not reflect a noticeable amount of energy back to space, but a sky full of air traffic 24/7 might.  I do not personally worry about losing a tiny fraction of power on my solar panels from contrails reflecting light back into space.

I recorded this video when working outside.  I thought the contrails looked interesting on a relatively clean, blue sky and decided to press the record button.  It occurred to me that contrails are like clouds, and I know that clouds reflect solar energy back to space.  A cloudy day is bad for solar energy collection, so contrails must take a fraction of our energy, too.

What’s the difference between a contrail and chemtrail?

There are many references online to “chemtrails”, where some people believe that unmarked jets are spraying the population with harmful chemicals.  Why do they believe this and where is the evidence?  I have not seen conclusive evidence showing that chemtrails are real.  However, contrails are real.  Just look up at the sky and you will see how real they are.  Contrails, like the proposed idea of chemtrails, are a form of pollution and do contain compounds poisonous to life.  But so is the exhaust coming out of petroleum-powered vehicles.  Contrails from aircraft are like the equivalent of land-based smog from automobiles.  Both are harmful to our health.

Is it a conspiracy?  I don’t see any proof for that.  But is is bad for our health?  Yes, it’s bad for life because contrails pollute our air.

Toxic Sky

NBC-4’s Paul Moyer hosted a series called “Toxic Sky”.

Whether you believe in chemtrails or not, if you want clean air to breathe, we should minimize the exhaust from aircraft and automobiles burning fossil fuel.  Switching to a cleaner energy source would be good for all of us.

Sources:

1.  The importance of the diurnal and annual cycle of air traffic for contrail radiative forcing [ abstract ]

Department of Meteorology, The University of Reading, Reading RG6 6BB, UK

2.  Ministry of Defense, Publication Date 8 April 2008:  Turbine Fuel, Aviation Kerosene Type, Jet A-1, pages 8 ~ 11

PDF:  http://www.dstan.mod.uk/standards/defstans/91/091/00000600.pdf alternate link

3.  Wikipedia:  Jet Fuel [ Wikipedia ]

Broken electronic toys can be made useful, as shown in the following video.  See how a broken toy can be repurposed as a battery pack.  Pop a few rechargeable batteries into it and light up some LED’s.  Domokun now has a spotlight!

VIDEO

The crazy character shown illuminated is Domokun.

The toy used to have an electric motor inside it as well, but I already removed that before recording the video.

The 2 LED’s were salvaged from a broken flashlight.

The flashlight would no longer turn on with the switch, so I took the LED’s out and now they can be lit up this way.

Instead of throwing used electronics in the trash, you might be able to create something new from them.