Hello, Dr. Zoomie – I’m watching Better Call Saul and there’s this scene in one episode (Season 5, Episode 5) where Saul’s trying to help a guy keep from being evicted by grinding up a bunch of radioactive sources from smoke detectors to sprinkle on the land. When the State radiation folks come by to do a survey they say levels are low, then take some soil samples and say it’s all safe. I know it’s only TV – but can you comment? I’m curious.
Huh – I’ve watched the entire series a few times through and didn’t remember this one. But, being a diligent health physicist and answerer of questions, I found the series on Netflix and watched it, and I can understand your curiosity. For those of you who haven’t seen the show or who don’t remember this episode, a somewhat shady lawyer (Saul) is trying to help an elderly property owner (Everett) fight against having to sell his home to a large company. One of Saul’s schemes involves buying a dozen or so smoke detectors, removing the Am-241 source, putting all of the sources into a coffee grinder, and turning them into powder. Then Saul and Everett go outside and spread the radioactive powder on the property and call the state health department, who comes out to find elevated radiation levels, requiring further study and delaying the demolition of Everett’s home for another few days or so. From a health physics perspective, I can see a few areas of concern:
1) Removing the sources (Am-241) from the smoke detectors doesn’t really put anybody at risk; most smoke detector sources consist of a few micrograms of Am-241 electroplated onto a small piece of metal foil, so the risk of contamination is low, and Am-241 emits only very, very low levels of gamma radiation. It also gives off alpha radiation (which is how it detects smoke and other particles in the air), but the alpha particles themselves only travel a few mm in air so they won’t pose any risk to anyone.
2) Grinding up the sources in a coffee grinder…is a little different story. If you’ve been reading this blog for more than a month or so you’ve probably realized that I don’t tend to worry excessively about low levels of radiation and radioactivity. But on this one…I have to admit I raised my eyebrows. Am-241 is an alpha emitter and inhalation is the most dangerous form of exposure to alpha emitters. Pulverizing the sources in an unsealed coffee grinder runs the risk of letting airborne radioactivity leak into the atmosphere during the grinding as well as potentially depositing Am-241 contamination throughout the area where the grinding took place. The health physicist in me was very disappointed.
3) Spreading the ground-up sources onto the soil also disappointed me, especially after all the decontamination and decommissioning work I’ve done over the decades. The thought of deliberately spreading a fine powder of alpha-emitting radioactivity around a pristine site (even fictitiously) just rubs me the wrong way. The risks here are about the same as from the grinding – very little risk from radiation exposure, but there’s still the risk of inhaling an alpha-emitting radionuclide. And, in this case, there’s also the risk of contaminating both men’s clothing and shoes and spreading it to wherever they walk (including inside the home Everett is fighting so hard to hang onto).
4) Working on and around the contaminated soil has already been pretty well-covered – simply walking on the site has the potential to resuspend the Am-241 powder, where it can be inhaled and pose a threat to the health of those walking and working on the plot of land. Luckily, a coffee grinder isn’t likely to produce the very fine particles that are most likely to ascend into the breathing zone, and any particles that do become airborne are unlikely to travel very far.
5) Deciding whether to remediate or leave the contamination in place is a tougher call; thankfully, there are regulatory guidelines in place to help make this decision – they’d just need to compare the soil sample results to the guidelines. I won’t go into the details here, though, since I recently wrote about characterizing and remediating contaminated sites!
All that being said, I’ve got to admit that this is one of the better depictions of this sort of thing I’ve seen. Not the plot to help Everett stay in his home – that’s just wrong on so many levels. But as a plot device, it was really well-done. In particular, nobody hit the roof and started screaming about finding small amounts of radioactive contamination, there were no apocalyptic pronouncements about everyone dying, nobody was wearing the self-contained “moonsuit” Level A protective equipment, and everyone accepted that it could be cleaned up. I’ve got to admit it was sort of refreshing to see a minor plot device involving radioactivity that was treated as an annoyance rather than the end of the world.