Radiation in Everyday Life

It's a pity not everybody has got a radiation meter. Everybody who owns one, already knows that there is radiation everywhere. Turn on the meter where ever you go, and it starts counting radiation pulses. At some places it counts faster and at other slower. But there is no place where there is no radiation. If you put a radiation meter close to an old watch, an expensive camera, a smoke detector or certain crockery, or if you take it with you in a plane that takes off, the count rate increases. This means that the radiation is stronger close to these items and at higher altitudes. You can hear this with your ears and see it with you own eyes from the display. So, it must be true. The world we live in is radioactive. Radioactive substances and radiation existed on Earth before the first man was born. Radiation reaches us from the cosmos and is also emitted from radioactive substances in the ground, in construction material, in the food we eat and the air we breathe. All people are radioactive, too. For instance, all of us have got radioactive Radium and Polonium in our skeleton, radioactive Carbon and Potassium in our muscles and radioactive noble gases and Tritium in our lungs. The radiation emitted by your body can be measured by a very sensitive radiation meter called a Whole Body Counter