DIY Xray photos! :)

Sigurthr said:

Damage to the intestinal lining causes bacterial leakage (sepsis) and dehydration, bone marrow damage causes loss of white blood cells and immune system destruction. The loss of immune system coupled with the sepsis is the main cause of death from radiation poisoning.

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aryntha said:

Yup, isn't that called the "walking ghost" phase of radiation poisoning? When someone has gotten a lethal dose; the initial burn/vomiting/fever etc effects have worn off and the victim feels fine for a while (even like they have completely recovered) -- but their intestinal lining and blood cells are already too damanged to recover?

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Cyparagon said:

Your setup is pulsed at 60Hz though, isn't it? One cycle of the mains frequency passes through the tube. Or by "pulsed" is it meant that high voltage capacitors are used?

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Cyparagon said:

So the only reason for filtering it would be to get a more accurate reading on the Geiger counter? Sounds like more trouble than it's worth.

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Sigurthr said:

Pretty much. The alternative is to spend >$1200 on a quick-responce ion chamber calibrated for low energy xrays.

If you're going to be playing with fire, you should take precautions. Having an X-ray generator and no means of accurately measuring dose/exposure rates is far worse than having a 2W 532nm labby and no goggles. You're not just endangering yourself but everyone within a couple hundred feet of you. There is no way to tell if your shielding is effective if you can't accurately measure the radiation level.

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Sigurthr said:

Ya, for a one time thing I think you're ok. I wasn't really criticising your photoshoot, just putting proper safety out there for future use. =)

Remember that xrays -can- reflect and scatter off high Z (density) materials, including lead shields. It has more to do with the angle of incidence than anything else, iirc.

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aryntha said:

Yup, isn't that called the "walking ghost" phase of radiation poisoning? When someone has gotten a lethal dose; the initial burn/vomiting/fever etc effects have worn off and the victim feels fine for a while (even like they have completely recovered) -- but their intestinal lining and blood cells are already too damanged to recover?

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Sigurthr said:

I forget the actual insane dose necessary for it, but 100R (1Gy) and up sounds about right. There have been peacetime incidents where exposures of >5000R have happened those poor men died in hours.

Be careful dealing with salvaged medical equipment. I remember there was a south american case where a scrapyard worker got hold of a 500Ci (!) Cs137 collimated x-ray source. Most of his coworkers and family received fatal doses. They took it home and showed it off because of the cherenkov radiation (glowing blue light) it gave off.

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December 6, 1983 – Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, A local resident salvaged materials from a discarded radiation therapy machine carrying 6,000 pellets of 60Co. The dismantling and transport of the material led to severe contamination of his truck; when the truck was scrapped, it in turn contaminated another 5,000 metric tonnes of steel with an estimated 300 Ci (11 TBq) of activity. This material was sold for kitchen or restaurant table legs and building materials, some of which was sent to the U.S. and Canada; the incident was discovered when a truck delivering contaminated building materials months later to the Los Alamos National Laboratory accidentally drove through a radiation monitoring station. Contamination was later measured on the roads that were used to transport the original damaged radiation source. In some cases pellets were actually found embedded in the roadway. In the state of Sinaloa, 109 houses were condemned due to contaminated building material. This incident prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Customs Service to install radiation detection equipment at all major border crossings.[21]

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