This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
This page has archives. Sections older than 730 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 3 sections are present. |
I have serious concerns about the accuracy of this section. It doesn't have references to support all of its claims, and the three references it does have are incomplete (one is an old book in German, so I have no way to verify it).
First Alert (smoke detector manufacturer) claims that
Americium 241 is harmless outside the body because the radiation it emits is too weak to penetrate human skin. Swallowing Americium—even though this is not recommended—is also considered harmless. In known cases where the element was consumed, the substance passed through the gastrointestinal tract and out of the body without leaving any detectable contamination. [1]
Another page says
The radiation from exposure to americium is the primary cause of health effects from absorbed americium. Americium moves rapidly through the body after uptake and is concentrated within the bones for a long period of time. During this storage americium will slowly decay and release radioactive particles and rays. These rays can cause alteration of genetic materials and bone cancers.
Damage to organs due to americium exposure is highly unlikely for humans, because americium is accumulated in organs only a short period of time. [2]
First Alert isn't neutral, but neither of these statements align with the dire claims in this article. Perhaps just rewording some things to be clear about the amounts of Am-241 in a smoke detector would suffice. StevenBell ( talk) 20:14, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
What is the americium 241 decay proces? İs it starts itselfs? How can i stop it? 88.245.98.219 ( talk) 05:30, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
Hi, I accidentally invented a new type of thruster which uses 241Am and 4He inside a sealed vacuum tube like device filled with low pressure gas. The idea here is to use a thin window like HOPG which unlike Be does not generate neutrons. If the 241Am source is biased at a high voltage then a percentage of the alpha particles are accelerated and thus generate unidirectional thrust. This idea is actually not new but the use of UV pulsed emitters or other methods to bias the PG at its highest flux point required waiting until UV lasers and diode emitters became commercially available. I believe there is prior art dating from the early 1940s but wasn't aware of this when working on the devices. NASA have developed a very similar device using direct emission in much the same way but this can be used in room air. Actually called it the "Zetadrive" purely because it may or may not be based on the thrusters used on another aircraft. 78.111.198.3 ( talk) 06:51, 5 February 2023 (UTC)