Home Depot does not recycle old smoke detectors; however every city has a recycling program. Contact your cities’ waste disposal department for a recycling station in your area. Home Depot does not recycle old smoke detectors; however every city has a recycling program.

Alpha particles

Smoke detectors typically fall within two categories: photoelectric and ionization. When it comes to disposal, old photoelectric detectors can be safely put in the trash, so long as you remove the battery first. Read on for information about ionization detectors.

Carbon monoxide detectors do not contain radioactive material, so you can treat them as you would photoelectric smoke detectors.

First Alert offers a complimentary disposal service for up to 4 intact First Alert, Onelink, or BRK detectors. If you’re not able to return the detectors to us, contact your local waste or recycling center for other options.

It is likely that the reason your smoke alarm keeps chirping and beeping is that the battery is low. Some of the same factors that cause unwanted alarms can cause intermittent alarms: dust and insects in the alarm or power interruptions in hardwired alarms. Improper wiring on AC or AC/DC smoke alarms.

What should you do with old carbon monoxide detectors? They may be disposed of with the trash, but be sure to take the batteries out and recycle them. Many hardware stores have battery-recycling stations.

americium-241

An isotope of americium which emits alpha particles is used in smoke alarms. Alpha radiation ionises the air and this allows a small current to flow between two electrodes. Alpha is weakly penetrating so smoke stops it, the current drops and the alarm goes off.

(a) The diagram shows the parts of a smoke detector. The radioactive source emits alpha particles. The alpha particles ionise the air inside the sensor which causes a small electric current. (i) The smoke detector would not work if a radioactive source that emitted only gamma rays was used.

Hazards. Americium-241 has the same general hazards as other americium isotopes: it is both extremely toxic and radioactive. Although α-particles can be stopped by a sheet of paper, there are serious health concerns for ingestion of α-emitters.

The source should have a long half-life so that the smoke detector does not have to be replaced too frequently, and so that the count rate remains almost constant each day. Radioactive isotopes can be used as medical and industrial tracers.

Different ligands form coordination complexes which give the technetium enhanced affinity for particular sites in the human body. Tc decays by gamma emission, with a half-life: 6.01 hours. The short half-life ensures that the body-concentration of the radioisotope falls effectively to zero in a few days.

The law of radioactive decay describes the statistical behavior of a large number of nuclides, rather than individual ones. The decay rate equation is: N=N0e−λt N = N 0 e − λ t .

Half-life, in radioactivity, the interval of time required for one-half of the atomic nuclei of a radioactive sample to decay (change spontaneously into other nuclear species by emitting particles and energy), or, equivalently, the time interval required for the number of disintegrations per second of a radioactive …

The average life or the mean life of a radioactive substance is given by the ratio of the total lifetime of all the individual parent atoms to the total number of such atoms present in the sample.

two half