I meant precisely what I said. Tracking NiCads to the standards of the NPT would presumably be impossible. If your standard is "keep it out of the food supply", though, I guarantee that there's a little bit of NiCad in that hot dog in your fridge, and there'd be much less NiCad in your hot dog if they tripped a radiation detector before they hit the incinerator or the landfill.
I've been thinking for a while that there are so many possible sources of poisons it's very hard to monitor them all. But there is only one of me. So logically I should check if I have elevated levels of poisons. Then, and only then does it make sense to start monitoring my surroundings to trace where it came from.
Whether it's warranted or not is immaterial given the current situation with regulations and there seems little chance of that changing.
Personally, I've a healthy respect for radiation/nuclear materials but I'm not afraid to work with them so long as I know what I'm dealing with—and that's the key point. It'd be a bit pretentious to describe situations where I've been exposed to radiation levels above background except to say they were deemed occupationally safe. That said, I've always avoided such situations when and wherever possible.
Let's put my view into perspective: here's NileRed (a YouTube channel I like and watch often) making uranium glass in his home lab: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RGw6fXprV9U.
Note: I'd never do this despite the low level radiation because of the potential for breathing in uranium dust, albeit a small risk. That said, I nevertheless own several old wine glasses made from uranium glass which I keep not to use for drinking but as a demonstration of how uranium glass fluoresces under UV light.
It's very difficult to put information about radiation into proper perspective or in ways that the lay public can properly understand and appreciate, thus the need for tight regulations. Then, as I mentioned, there are the bad actors and of course a small collection of damn fools who are a danger not only to themselves but also to others.
No doubt, you're right about cadmium and traces of it in food. That comparison isn't lost on me either. It just so happens at another time I ran a business maintaining handheld portable cassette recorders of the type used in exhibitions, etc. and they used rechargeable NiCd batteries that needed replacement. It was not unusual for me to have to dispose of upwards of 500 old, often leaking batteries. Being concerned about Cd contamination and disposing of it in an environmentally-friendly manner was just part of the job.
Contamination from heavy metals is a very real problem and it's not only Cd but also Pb, Tl, Hg, As and orhers. Moreover, assessing the actual risk can be very difficult and depends very much on circumstances.
Like its more notorious mate mercury, cadmium is a poisonous heavy metal, nevertheless that hasn't stopped it from being used in industry for plating etc. (passivated cadmium plating makes a very nice surface). Thus, in the recent past cadmium has been deemed safe enough for these purposes in the same way mercury was considered safe enough for tooth amalgam/fillings. That said, just add a couple of CH3 methyl groups to Cd and we get one of the most diabolical poisons available—dimethylcadmium (same goes for Hg—dimethylmercury). Fortunately, these diabolical compounds aren't that common so we must take that into account when assessing the dangers of these heavy metals.
Heavy metals are everywhere in the environment both from natural sources and from pollution, so when assessing the risks several factors predominate, concentration and their potential for forming compounds that are far more toxic than are the base metals. Also, these compounds are often soluble which adds to their danger.
BTW, it's often been said that one cubic meter of soil from the average backyard has enough naturally occurring arsenic to kill someone—or at least sufficient to make them very sick. I've never seen assays to prove that one way or other but assuming it's true it puts the risks from heavy metals into perspective.
You can also order (natural) Uranium ore via the mail or on Amazon, some of which has pretty high disintegration rates and a decently high amount of Radium in it. 80-100k CPS.
Or just walk to a number of known sites in Utah and pick up chunks of ore off the ground.
A real danger IMO with Alpha and Beta emitters is that most Geiger counters aren’t going to pick them up at all - most are only meaningfully sensitive to Gamma.
"…(natural) Uranium ore via the mail or on Amazon, some of which has pretty high disintegration rates and a decently high amount of Radium in it."
I'm in Australia and there's no shortage† of the stuff here. Moreover, mining it has always been politically controversial.
Whilst it wouldn't happen now, when I was at school decades ago we had radioactive sources in the science lab and we did experiments showing how alpha rays could be stopped by paper, beta with tin foil and so on.
I also recall the lab had a round section of metallic uranium a bit bigger than a US silver dollar and about twice as thick, it was handed around the class for all to feel how heavy the element was. It was also a source of radioactivity for our Geiger counter (but not the only one).
To some degree, we have to be pragmatic about access to such materials but I'd be the first to agree that finding the right balance is difficult. Scaring everyone out of their wits about radioactivity is counterproductive (as we've seen in recent decades), similarly overfamiliarity is as equally dangerous.
I'm glad I had that early experience at school together with proper instruction that put its dangers into perspective.
The same went for mercury which we had at school in reasonable quantities. We were taught its dangers and to be very careful with it, especially so its compounds.
In recent times I've met young people who've never actually seen mercury and who are terrified of even the mention of it. Clearly no one ever wants a repeat of the
Minamata tragedy but being scared of elemental mercury to this extent isn't right either.
I've often said our best approach is proper education, that is by providing factually accurate information from early on.
Seems to me in recent years we've not done a particularly good job at doing that.
