If you ’ve been exposed to a certain eccentric of radiation , you should waste no time getting decontaminate — by having a beer . This is a metre - honor mode of dealing with tritium contamination , from the early days of Los Alamos to today .
Tritium is hydrogen consider down by not one , but two extra neutron . The ordinarily footloose and neutron free hydrogen is so distressed by its two companions that it annihilates its own identity . One of the neutrons decays into a proton , turning the H into helium . The process often releases a low - muscularity electron , but can also spit out a comparatively high-pitched - energy electron , known as a beta corpuscle . Outside the body , this is no trouble . The skin can stop over a beta speck .
Inside the physical structure it ’s a unlike story . The beta particle can take out DNA and cause cancer . Tritium has a passel of style of catch into the torso . It can pollute water , or hang around in the air , letting hoi polloi breathe it in . Once in the body , it gets incorporated into “ physical structure water , ” which is just what it sounds like . The fluid that sloshes around every part of our body is suddenly contaminated with tritium .

as luck would have it , scientist have discover a great way to reduce tritium exposure . Increase the “ turnover rate ” of water in the physical structure . One bare way of doing this is upping liquid consumption . If the consumed liquid has the effect of flush out the liquid already present in the torso , so much the better . This is why standard pattern for scientists at Los Alamos who worked with tritium was to head off to a bar and get drinking . Beer is a diuretic , taking liquid out of the system . A few beers can up the body ’s turnover rate and flush out the tritium .
For those of you who do n’t like beer , other popular diuretics are wine , coffee , and Camellia sinensis . All of these are recommend in theEnvironmental Protection Agency ’s guidelines for tritium safety . In the section entitled “ dose diminution ” the report enthusiastically states that enouch consumption can reduce the biological half - life – the time it take for a substance to lose half of its upshot in the physical structure – from ten days to only four or five days . The report also recommend chemical diuretics , but cautions that they should only be used after audience with a doctor .
Best to go for a beer first .

[ ViaIs Radioactive Hydrogen in Drinking Water a Threat , Primer on Tritium Safe Handling , Tainting by Tritium . ]
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