p.1 #1 · How Do You Store Your Radioactive Lenses?
So, I recently discovered that I own a few radioactive lenses (Canon FL lenses, Mamiya lenses, Konica lenses, and Pentax lenses). After some research, I came across a post by someone who suggested storing them in an aluminum box. I have an old aluminum camera briefcase, and I hope they'll be "contained" well enough there.
How do you store your old radioactive lenses?
Jul 28, 2025 at 08:28 AM
AmbientMike Offline • • • • • • [X]
p.1 #2 · How Do You Store Your Radioactive Lenses?
I try to keep them at least 6 inches from anything.
I got an old cold war geiger counter to check lenses, they used to be fairly inexpensive, you couldn't get a reading off the check source used to calibrate the meter if you moved back. Reading online, one guy said the same about his old large format lens. Certainly distance helps, however much is required.
Geiger counter broke, I actually set ones I'm suspicious of on an old box I can throw out, getting it >6 inches from anything . I have one that might be really active, need to give it away or something
p.1 #3 · How Do You Store Your Radioactive Lenses?
snegron7 wrote:
So, I recently discovered that I own a few radioactive lenses (Canon FL lenses, Mamiya lenses, Konica lenses, and Pentax lenses). After some research, I came across a post by someone who suggested storing them in an aluminum box. I have an old aluminum camera briefcase, and I hope they'll be "contained" well enough there.
p.1 #5 · How Do You Store Your Radioactive Lenses?
My cell phone is inches away from and blasting RF radiation into my most important asset all day every day. My brain is slowly filling with microplastics. A little lens radioactivity doesn't budge the needle.
p.1 #6 · How Do You Store Your Radioactive Lenses?
From what I learnt when doing some research into things nuclear, we are subject to background radiation all day and depending on where you live you may be getting twice the dose of other people just due to local geology. There is basically no medical evidence to suggest people who are continually exposed to higher levels of low-level background radiation from rocks, granite benchtops, concrete, etc have worse health outcomes and may even have better outcomes. The theory is that some radiation stimulates the immune system which more than offsets the negative effects of the radiation.
Bottom line is don't worry about radioactive lenses. They may even be good for you.
p.1 #7 · How Do You Store Your Radioactive Lenses?
Geoff D F wrote:
... There is basically no medical evidence to suggest people who are continually exposed to higher levels of low-level background radiation from rocks, granite benchtops, concrete, etc have worse health outcomes...
You should look into the connection between Radon and lung cancer.
Jul 29, 2025 at 05:46 AM
AmbientMike Offline • • • • • • [X]
p.1 #8 · How Do You Store Your Radioactive Lenses?
They used to try to say its just alpha, which doesn't penetrate, which isn't true. Some of these lenses have quite a bit of gamma, significantly higher than background. I dont agree with everything this guy says but he certainly seems to know his way around a geiger counter
There are numerous different wavelengths of EMR, including the light we photograph, however gamma is ionizing radiation, i.e. it can break bonds and make different compounds, the most powerful
p.1 #9 · How Do You Store Your Radioactive Lenses?
AmbientMike wrote:
They used to try to say its just alpha, which doesn't penetrate, which isn't true. Some of these lenses have quite a bit of gamma, significantly higher than background. I dont agree with everything this guy says but he certainly seems to know his way around a geiger counter
There are numerous different wavelengths of EMR, including the light we photograph, however gamma is ionizing radiation, i.e. it can break bonds and make different compounds, the most powerful
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Hope you don't have granite benchtops because they emit more gamma than thorium lenses.
But if you want to be safe, avoid grinding up your thorium lens elements and breathing or ingesting the dust. Hope that helps 😀.
Jul 30, 2025 at 01:29 AM
AmbientMike Offline • • • • • • [X]
p.1 #10 · How Do You Store Your Radioactive Lenses?
Geoff D F wrote:
Hope you don't have granite benchtops because they emit more gamma than thorium lenses.
But if you want to be safe, avoid grinding up your thorium lens elements and breathing or ingesting the dust. Hope that helps 😀.
Well, no.
The bit about eating the thorium glass is what people used to say, when they tried to claim it's just emitting alpha. But if you watch the video, these lenses can pretty clearly emit quite a bit of gamma, which unlike alpha penetrates easily, so you dont have to actually ingest it
p.1 #11 · How Do You Store Your Radioactive Lenses?
I have two, a Zeiss pancolar, and a Nikon 35 mm F1.4, I have measured both with rad detection devices (gamma spectrometer and a simple counter), I do have a technical background, and my own assessment is that the lens are not be feared. My two happen to be mostly in another room from where I eat and sleep, along with all the camera gear not out of fear or risk. I measured the rads fall off very quickly, within inches. Thorium will in its decay series produce tiny amounts of radium and radon on its way to stable lead, so with a sensitive enough device one can detect a tiny amount of more energetic radiation than the thorium alpha. Half life is age of the earth for thorium. Is it risky no, the lens will increase your dose a tiny added increment to your annual exposure, flying, living in high granite areas, living at higher altitudes never mind medical.. yields massively more dose. I have had therapeutic radiation treatments- that is a dose to be feared for risk, maybe necessary, but the dose is billions if not more than these lens will produce. Of my two I like the 35 mm F1.4 Nikon, it was a serious journalist lens of the 1970s and remains a great lens adapted to a Z.
There is a thing about perceived risk, a person will get on an airplane and not think twice about the rad dose especially during solar maximum that is massively more in a single flight than will ever occur with the use of these lenses. I have measured the rads on numerous flights, and the dose/min > than the dose directly on the lens, and that does at 40k feet goes on for hours and hours.
p.1 #12 · How Do You Store Your Radioactive Lenses?
I am a retired nuclear-trained Navy officer and submariner. I started life as an enlisted before going back to college, and I was an "ELT" or engineering laboratory technician as a specialty. So I did nuclear water chemistry and radiological controls (radiation monitoring).
On one of my submarines we had a few crew members who had Thoriated-glass (Thorium) lenses and were curious about the activity level. We measured the emissions from a few of them using radiacs we had on board. Indeed the alpha emission (and the lenses were relatively new then) was non-trivial. We also measured one lanthanum lens (138 or 139 I think) and it was tiny in comparison - in fact not measurable with the instruments we had on board.
The Thoriated lenses start as pure alpha emitters which is not an external hazard. If you were to swallow an alpha emitter, it can cause quite a bit of internal damage to cell tissue (they're like tiny bullets shredding your cells). As the Thorium decays over time (but the half life is VERY long, billions of years) it goes through several unstable isotope steps. Eventually it gets to stable lead. Along the way it decays into several other isotopes including Radium, Polonium and others. Some of those are gamma emitters. But, the percentage of the gamma-emitting decay isotopes at any one time is a very small percentage of the total isotopes.
Gamma is a whole body hazard unlike alpha and beta. BUT, the level of gamma emission is very small. Bottom line is any Thoriated lens is not really "safe", but if stored away from you (don't sleep with them between your legs....) the risk is vanishingly low. One caution though - I wouldn't use a lens cleaning solution on a cloth, then handle the cloth, and certainly don't wipe your mouth with it!
So, I wouldn't sweat having Thoriated or Lanthanum lenses as long as you take some simple precautions. Storing in a closet away from you is more than enough. Just don't lick them to clean them....
One final note - the US postal service will occasionally detect Thoriated lenses in sorting and will not ship them.
