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radiation in grand canyon museum

3/1/2019

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The book Chemistry on a Budget contains inexpensive chemistry labs that are useful with easy to obtain materials.
 
There are two versions of each lab, one with a ten-question conclusion and one with directions for a full lab report.  This way the teacher has the option!  Each lab is two pages to allow for one two-sided handout. 
 
A 5-Star Customer Review of Chemistry on a Budget at amazon.com states:

“[S]traight forward, to the point, using household chemicals… this is the lab book for you. 
I teach high school chemistry and this is exactly what I was looking for. Labs included simple household chemicals that could be easily found. Nice format, easy to follow along procedures, and touches on every topic of our chemistry curriculum.”
 
You can buy this lab book for $23 at amazon.com or lulu.com. It will take 1-2 weeks to get to you -- Order Now.  It’s a great resource!
 
http://www.amazon.com/Chemistry-Budget-Marjorie-R-Heesemann/dp/0578129159/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1389410170&sr=1-1&keywords=chemistry+on+a+budget

http://www.lulu.com/shop/marjorie-r-heesemann/chemistry-on-a-budget/paperback/product-21217600.html
 
*Some of you have already purchased my lab book – be sure to check out Page 141 !
 
“For nearly 20 years, a trio of 5-gallon (19 liters) paint buckets sat near the taxidermy exhibit at Grand Canyon National Park's museum collections building. Those buckets, it turns out, weren't holding paint — they were actually loaded up with uranium ore, a naturally occurring rock rich in uranium that gives off potentially dangerous radiation.”
https://www.livescience.com/64824-grand-canyon-uranium-probably-fine.html#done
 
“Uranium ore stored at the Grand Canyon National Park museum may have exposed visitors and workers to elevated levels of radiation, according to the park's safety, health and wellness manager.

Elston Stephenson told CNN that he began asking officials from the National Park Service and Department of the Interior last summer to warn workers and tourists they had possibly been exposed to unsafe levels of radiation. …
 
‘If you were in the Museum Collections Building (bldg 2C) between the year 2000 and June 18, 2018, you were 'exposed' to uranium by OSHA's definition… 

Please understand, this doesn't mean that you're somehow contaminated, or that you are going to have health issues. It merely means essentially that there was uranium on the site and you were in its presence. ... And by law we are supposed to tell you.’
 
The National Park Service is investigating what happened and working with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Arizona Department of Health Services, according to the Department of the Interior, which oversees the park service.”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/20/health/grand-canyon-radiation-museum-trnd/index.html#done
 
“Uranium is naturally occurring in northern Arizona and was mined for decades, including at the Orphan Mine on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon that ceased operations in 1969. A temporary ban prohibits the filing of new mining claims within 1 million acres outside the boundaries of Grand Canyon National Park. The Navajo Nation no longer allows uranium mining after it left a legacy of death and disease on the reservation.”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/grand-canyon-radiation-officials-investigating-possible-exposure-to-uranium-ore/#done
 
“How was the uranium discovered after all that time? In March 2018, the teenage son of a park service employee had a Geiger counter that detected radiation in the collection room, Stephenson said. The buckets had apparently been in a basement for decades before being moved to the museum.”
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/19/696001017/grand-canyon-museum-reportedly-had-buckets-of-uranium-sitting-around-for-18-year#done

“Technicians wearing dishwashing gloves used a mop handle to move them into a truck and drive them offsite, he told AZ Central.

According to Stephenson, the ore was dumped into Orphan Mine, a disused uranium mine two miles from Grand Canyon Village, a cluster of hotels and shops where many visitors to the park pass through. But for unknown reasons, the empty buckets were brought back to the museum. They were then rediscovered inside the museum in November 2018, according to AZ Central, when they set off geiger counters brought by US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspectors who arrived to follow up on a report filed by Stephenson.”
https://qz.com/1553777/a-teenager-found-radioactive-material-in-the-grand-canyon-museum/#done
 
According to Kathryn Higley, head of the School of Nuclear Science and Engineering at Oregon State University reported,
 
‘What about the risk from radon gas? How long does the radon stick around?’
Radon has roughly a three-day half life. It’ll diffuse out of the buckets into the room, but if the room is ventilated, then the concentration drops and it’s not really a large issue. If you have it in a room that has really crummy ventilation and then potentially you could have an elevated radon level that exists. And so again, that would be something that people would take a look at and say, ‘Okay, is this in a closed space where folks would be sitting for prolonged periods of time? What is their potential risk over the long-term from inhaling any radon that’s coming off of that?’ It’d be an elevated risk of lung cancer, and again, it takes a pretty large dose to get to a level where we can actually see evidence of cancer causation in populations.”
 
The article above contains an interview that your students may wish to read thoroughly, perhaps as a homework assignment.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/19/18232027/uranium-ore-grand-canyon-museum-radiation-safety-health-risks#done
 
Past blog posts about Radiation include:
02/11/2015       Introduction to Nuclear Chemistry
02/18/2015       Nuclear Chemistry -- Part II
                            (Fission, Fusion & Half-Life)
10/30/2015       Current Event -- Radioactive Waste
                                                        from WWII
02/20/2016       Nuclear Waste and Lake Huron
03/26/2016       Nuclear Waste Storage
05/01/2016       30th Anniversary of Chernobyl  
05/29/2016       New Uses for Waste Glass
09/05/2016       US to Get Rid of Chemical Weapons
                           Stockpile
10/28/2016       Nuclear Power Plant Closure 
02/10/2017      High Fukushima Radiation Levels  
06/02/2017      Swiss Nuclear Power Ban
​09/01/2017      Radon in Houses
12/22/2017      The Radium Girls
 
*This Blog contains several entries that would be helpful to your chemistry classroom.  Check out the Topic List to help you to find past Blog entries.
 
Also, Write To Me about your successes, challenges, or questions in the Chemistry Classroom.
 
Remember, buying a copy of the lab book Chemistry on a Budget can be very useful to your Chemistry classroom with labs and class article ideas.

Have a great weekend!

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    Marjorie R. Heesemann is a chemistry teacher with 15 years of experience who is now working to develop resources for the Chemistry classroom.

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