Hi, I really want a Soviet watch that’s affordable and in a good condition. I came across this one and I really want it. But the thing is I’m kinda paranoid because I read that many watches had radioactive dials before the 1960’s and I don’t want to risk it with this one.
So is there a way to find out whether or not this is radioactive through the pictures?
Also, if anyone knows a good seller on ebay that has watches that are in good condition and are really affordable like this one, can you please share the link? I honestly don’t care if they aren’t 100% real or are frankens. I just really want a nice Soviet watch…
Wish that there was a long list that contained all the names of watches that were radioactive, so amateurs like me can be careful.
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That watch doesn’t appear to have any luminous paint, so there’s nothing that would contain radium. Even if it did have radium paint, it wouldn’t be dangerous unless you ate it.
Thank you for the swift and informative replies!
The radiation concerns come from the radium-based luminescent paint used on watch dials prior to the early 1960s. The watch in your link does not actually appear to have any luminescent paint.
Having said that, the majority of radium decay is alpha decay, which can be blocked by a sheet of paper, though a very small fraction is beta decay (blocked by a sheet/plate of aluminum) and gamma decay (blocked by a lead vest, much like what you would wear for an x-ray, or a couple inches of concrete). As the half-life of radium-226 is 1600 years even watches that do not glow in the dark anymore remain radioactive if they used radium lume when they were first produced.
The initial form of radium decay is to radon (yes, the radioactive gas) but it’s minimal enough that a well-ventilated space is sufficient to disperse the radon (because radon’s primary health effect on the human body is lung cancer, it would be years spent in a poorly-ventilated or unventilated space with a radium watch before the radon buildup induced lung cancer).
You sound like a health physicist.
Wow, excellent reply. Thank you for the knowledge.
I don’t see anything that looks like radium lume there.
Generally, radium paint materials will be whitish and thickly printed, or seen as a fill material in hour markers and hands, or small round dots next to hour markers. With age, it will darken, so sometimes it’s now tan or grey-green, but it will be a light color, and often looks chalky.
The radium paint itself is a mixture of a zinc sulphide based phosphor, radium salts, and organic paint binders, like an oil paint. The bulk of it is zinc sulphide, which is a white, chalky-looking material, so that’s what the paint looks like. To make zinc sulphide into a radioluminescent phosphor, it’s chemically altered with a trace amount of either silver or copper. Copper based phosphor can age greenish, but a lot also depends on how the paint binders age. Being organic compounds, and exposed to a lot of radiation from the radium content, they usually darken or yellow, just like old lacquer exposes to direct sunlight, resulting in a light brown color for the aged radium paint. The zinc sulphide itself breaks down from the radiation, so it stops glowing even though the radium salts remain radioactive.