What is Tritium?Discovered in 1934 by Ernest Rutherford, ML Oliphant and Paul Harteck, tritium (T, or H3) is the third isotope of hydrogen (H, or H1) alongside of deuterium (D, or H2). Although tritium (also known as superheavy hydrogen) is a natural isotope, it is mainly manufactured for industrial purposes.
How does a trigalight® tritium work?
A glass vessel is covered with luminous matter on the inner wall; subsequently, it is filled with tritium (radioactive) gas and sealed airtight. The electrons emitted by the tritium during it’s disintegration come into contact with the coating which absorbs the energy of the electrons and converts it into visible, so called cold light.
What are the risks of using Tritium in a GTLS?
None. The low energy electrons of tritium cannot escape the glass body of a mb-microtec trigalight.
Only the rupture of such a light source would free the tritium gas and it would quickly disburse. A typical traser H3 watch contains anywhere from 15 to 20 mb-microtec trigalight for a total of no more than 25 millicuries.
On a yearly bases, the wearer of such a watch must figure on an additional exposure of 0.1 micro sievert, which is about equal to the increase the human body would absorb due to cosmic or random radiation, by living an additional 12 inches above sea level. This 0.1 microsievert is also about 30’000 less than the average yearly exposure due to that same background radiation. Now, lets assume that in a closed, unventilated room all the GTLS of 40 such watches (also 1000 millicuries or 600 to 800 GTLS) would simultaneously burst open and release their tritium gas, the resulting exposure to a person in that room would still be only about 50% of the yearly, random background exposure that every living creature on earth is exposed to. This example, as unlikely as it may seem, serves well to illustrate the scientific facts about this technology and further demonstrates the safe nature of this product.
To view our collection of traser watches visit our store at Blue Tritium Watches
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