[Rockhounds] Toxic Minerals and Common Sense

[DonH]

Axel Emmermann wrote:

> I know someone who has been diagnosed with radiation disease as a result of
> life-long collecting of uranium minerals.
> The guy was REALLY spooked when the doctor explained the odds to him.
> People who have light symptoms of poisoning usually don't link it to their
> hobby. Doctors don't even look there is you don't point them in the right
> direction (same as with aspartame and other artificial sweeteners)
> I would dare to say that there may be hundreds of people out there with mild
> symptoms of lead, copper, you name it, poisoning.


Indeed, I know of two collectors who died in relation to radioactive 
minerals.  One had bone cancer in his leg and it had been assumed that 
the radiation emanated from a large specimen of pitchblende he kept on 
the floor under his desk.  Another had a bolo tie made of autunite (!!!) 
and contracted throat cancer.

On a related matter, this poster will be presentee at GSA 2007 in 
Denver, regarding the kind of earth materials we breathe in that reside 
in the lungs:

http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2007AM/finalprogram/abstract_128293.htm

There is a Reviews in Mineralogy, Volume 28, published by MSA, titled 
"Health Effects of Mineral Dusts" that presents a lot of detail on the 
subject as well.

Smoking and particle inhalation are co-carcinogenic.  It may be the case 
that a lot of miners, lapidaries, or farmers for that matter, who died 
of lung cancer actually had the cancer triggered by the combination of 
both; the cause was probably tied to smoking but these days there is a 
lot of diagnostic drift, and we know that it is not necessarily the case 
that we can attribute the cause of cancer to simply "smoking" without 
looking at what else was involved.

In the next 10 years and beyond, studies will show we are getting sick 
due to reasons we didn't think about in the past, and that there are a 
lot of aggravating factors that are linked together.


"For things are interesting, only in so far as they relate themselves to 
other things."  -- D'Arcy Wenthworth Thompson


Don