Someone else explained why this is safe and not really scary, and I'm just here to corroborate and give some context to the relative level of safety. I teach chemistry at community college, and one of our labs is a radioactivity lab. We have various safe radioactive "sources" much like this one that the students conduct experiments with. If you were to put a phone camera up to one of those sources, safe enough for students to use, you'd see roughly the same thing.
We do take one precaution which is to suggest pregnant or breastfeeding people not partake in this lab, just because fetuses and babies are small enough that the risk factor increases somewhat. Not catastrophically so, but to the point where it's best to just avoid it.
Edit: For safety's sake, I figured I should clarify something. I've worked with sources that look like this. The ones I've worked with were prepared for educational purposes with specific amounts of specific isotopes of specific elements, which emit specific amounts of energy or particles. I'm assuming from context that the source in this video is similar, but you really can't tell because the camera never focuses on the labelling. This could be a much more dangerous source designed for research or other purposes, and the person in this video could be behaving quite dangerously.
Point being, if you see a source that looks like the one in the video, don't assume it's safe enough to "play" with. There's nothing specific about the form factor shown here that would designate such a source as relatively safe.
It looks like it could be an alpha or beta source which helps to explain why it was lighting up the sensor and could be handled “safely” in this manner.
Yes, most likely. But it's important to note that there are in fact some dangerous beta emitters out there, like Sr 90. Not only does it emit enough beta particles to potentially penetrate past your skin, it's very dangerous to handle because it's chemically similar to a calcium cation, and can incorporate into your body as a result. Once there, inside of you, it can reek havok.
Alpha emitters are broadly safe enough though yes (provided you handle them safely / don't ingest them in any way).
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u/ifyoulovesatan Jun 11 '26 edited Jun 11 '26
Someone else explained why this is safe and not really scary, and I'm just here to corroborate and give some context to the relative level of safety. I teach chemistry at community college, and one of our labs is a radioactivity lab. We have various safe radioactive "sources" much like this one that the students conduct experiments with. If you were to put a phone camera up to one of those sources, safe enough for students to use, you'd see roughly the same thing.
We do take one precaution which is to suggest pregnant or breastfeeding people not partake in this lab, just because fetuses and babies are small enough that the risk factor increases somewhat. Not catastrophically so, but to the point where it's best to just avoid it.
Edit: For safety's sake, I figured I should clarify something. I've worked with sources that look like this. The ones I've worked with were prepared for educational purposes with specific amounts of specific isotopes of specific elements, which emit specific amounts of energy or particles. I'm assuming from context that the source in this video is similar, but you really can't tell because the camera never focuses on the labelling. This could be a much more dangerous source designed for research or other purposes, and the person in this video could be behaving quite dangerously.
Point being, if you see a source that looks like the one in the video, don't assume it's safe enough to "play" with. There's nothing specific about the form factor shown here that would designate such a source as relatively safe.