Uncle Bill wrote:Don't worry about the radioactivity on older watches. It will make a meter scream, but its very short range radiation and won't harm you - on the
exterior of your body, that is. It worried me at first, as some of my older finds did this, so I checked them out a bit careful, like! Anybody contemplating
internal use should disregard the foregoing... UB

(To be serious, they're Alpha particles which are very short range and can be stopped by tissue paper. If. however, the source were to get into an open wound or be ingested it could be very dangerous as the particles will destroy cells. Do not eat old watches or use them as suppositories... )
Short story but true. One of my departments had a guy called Reg. He was an instrument man but before he joined the company he had repaired watches. Anyway he set up 'business' within the company, he had a young family, to repair watches and sell stuff which was great and we called him Regomart. Well he got ill and they diagnosed pollips in his intestine. They can be cancerous. Well just after he started (going back) we were having a chat and I knew the building that here had worked in, London way, and it was Smiths Instruments. Then Kodak went in there and had terrible problems with fogged film. They left. I put two and two together and it was radioactive particles from the lume. Going forwards, he lost his insides and had a bag which didn't affect his work. Trouble is that pollips run in families and so his sons had to be rectically checked, for the pollips, frequently.
Turns out that when they were repairing instruments, they used to lick the brushes that held the radioactive lume. When we were talking it came out and I told him how he got sick. He cried. Without realising what he was doing, he ingested high levels of strong radioactive particles and further put his family through the grinder as well.
So dont knock Health and Safety at work because my friend Reg was not looked after at all.