urinary excretion of cesium, bismuth, etc.
This is not directly related to Fukushima, but perhaps so tangentially to background radiation that we live with on a daily basis, so I hope that someone with any input might post it here. It might be relevant to background radiation, but I'm not sure...
Years ago, I had a urinary test for toxic elements. Some of the current discussion reminded me of this. The test gave normal ranges, cautionary ranges, and maximum permissable levels. Assuming that the lab and the testing was valid (the company was since bought out and changed hands and no longer has the same name), I'm curious if anyone can give me any insight.
At the time, I was mostly concerned about things like mercury and aluminum. The things that showed up in the warning zones were mercury, bismuth, tin, and cadmium.
There were minute amounts of some other things, no Uranium detected.
However, close to the borderline of the warning range was Cesium and Gallium.
Could this cesium and bismuth be radioactive isotopes? Years later, on a whim, I had a hair analysis done on my dog, and she showed high in bismuth. For years, I've been wondering where this bismuth comes from....
Would appreciate any thoughts.
It's important to remember
It's important to remember that all of these metals you mentioned -- cesium, bismuth, etc. -- are naturally occurring and also occur in non-radioactive varieties. We can still get heavy metal poisoning from them without them being radioactive isotopes.
Bismuth, for instance, not only is a daughter of radon, but is also a stable element found in the ground. Were you taking a lot of Pepto-Bismol at the time?
Tim [BRAWM Team Member]
no....
no drugs, no cosmetics. the dog either ;-)
The dog had a stainless steel(?) plate and screws in her hip. I had wondered if the bismuth was part of the metal alloy, though I was pretty sure it was supposed to be all SS. But the posts here made me go back and look at my info, and I was suprised that we had these similarities.
It's a mystery!=
Copy and Paste
You may find some good information on Bismuth here...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth
I found it interesting.
thanks...
I appreciate the link. I've been reading that and lots of other things, but where it came from has always been a mystery to me.
Bithmus is one of the decay
Bithmus is one of the decay products of Radon. If you have Radon in your house, you are probably breathing it in from dust in the home.
oh my
That's what I was afraid of, after reading some of the posts here.
Also worried about testing for radon - seems cheap enough to do, but fixing it may be expensive and also have to disclose in order to sell the house. My other dog has a number of unexplained lung issues...
Anyway, appreciate the insight, now I have to figure out what to do with the info.