The decision to paint dividers white and green had generated a lot of heat, with the traffic branch apprehending a spurt in the number of accidents. Sarmah, who is involved in the painting exercise, said once the radium paint is applied, the dividers would glow and drivers? vision would be undisturbed. The decision was taken at a meeting of officials, private investors and citizens on the beautification of the city before the rally,? the official added.Īssam Real Estate and Infrastructure Developers Association president P.K. We also wanted to check how a change in colour would look. ?It is mandatory only on national highways. The official said the decision to change the colour scheme was taken after a go-ahead was received from the public works department, which clarified that black, yellow and white was the preferable colour combination but not mandatory within city limits. As a result, the possibility of accidents owing to the departure from conventional black-and-white can be ruled out. He said the radium paint would serve as luminescent reflectors at night. Stung by criticism over painting road dividers and flyovers in the city with white and mint green on the eve of the Indo-Asean car rally, Dispur has taken the decision with alacrity.Ī senior official said a huge quantity of white radium paint has been purchased from Delhi for application on dividers as well as flyovers in the city. Workers have started applying coats of luminescent radium paint on dividers to preclude visibility problems for drivers. 8: Guwahati will now be able to reveal its true colours ? and motorists will surely thank Dispur for that! The color isn’t green, through, but a pale blue similar to that of an electric arc.A freshly painted road divider in the city. So as the tell-tale glow continues to fade, how will you prevent your ancient watch dial or whatever from deteriorating and contaminating your great, great grandchildren’s home, or ending up in a landfill and in the local water supply?Įven without the phosphor, pure radium emits enough alpha particles to excite nitrogen in the air, causing it to glow. The radiation emitted is completely harmless as long as you don’t ingest or inhale the radium-in which case it becomes a serious cancer risk. The isotope of radium used has a half life of 1200 years, but the chemical phosphor that makes it glow has broken down from the constant radiation-so if you have luminescent antiques that barely glow, you might want to have them tested with a Geiger counter and take appropriate precautions. Glow-in-the-dark items that recharge to full brightness after brief exposure to sunlight or a fluorescent light only to dim again over a couple of hours are photoluminescent, and contain no radiation.Īn aside on aging radium: By now, most radium paint manufactured early in the 20th century has lost most of its glow, but it’s still radioactive. In most consumer products, though, radioluminescence has been replaced by photoluminescence, phosphors that emit light of one frequency after absorbing photons of a difference frequency. Today, in applications where it is warranted (like spacecraft instrument dials and certain types of sensors, for example), the radiation source is tritium (radioactive hydrogen) or an isotope of promethium, either of which has a vastly shorter half life than radium. The use of radioluminescent paint was mostly phased out by the mid-1960s.
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