On working with radiation

Today I started using radioactive labels in the lab. It's a little unnerving at first, because your only defense against exposure is to literally hide from it. I'm not even kidding. It's not like a bad smell which maybe, if you're lucky, will waft the other way. This stuff travels in straight lines in every direction. You work with a Geiger counter next to you which emits infrequent blips, until you open up the container of pure radiolabeled material. Now the counter is making a sound that necessitates the lab phrase "screaming hot" (where 'hot' is slang for 'radioactive'). So that's cool.

I guess it's nice that there's a plexiglass shield that I work behind to keep it from irradiating me. But then you realize that the person you're talking to from the lab down the hall has actually positioned themselves with a steel filing cabinet between the two of you, so you start second-guessing how safe you really are. Every blip on the Geiger counter becomes an immediate concern. When moving things about the lab, the plexiglass shield has a little shelf so you can carry stuff around without taking it from behind the shield. I catch myself "pointing" the shield away from people (because it has no back to speak of), but then I realize it's nearly pointless because radiation goes in every direction. It peters out at certain distance, but who wants to be Bubble Boy?

I suppose it's just something I'll have to adjust to. There's a whole new set of precautions to take, which I admit does give me plenty of opportunities to wear my semi-tinted, semi-reflective safety glasses. And I have plenty of bench space to myself now, because no one wants to cozy up to the guy whose samples are radioactive. Oh well, gotta take the good with the questionably unhealthy every now and then.