Comment by londons_explore
4 days ago
Nearly everything you find in nature has such low levels of radioactivity that handling them isn't dangerous.
It's only when you start refining and enriching natural things that they become really risky. Unfortunately thats what Curie did.
> It's only when you start refining and enriching natural things that they become really risky.
It’s a big factor, but not only. You don’t need to refine or enrich anything to have radon poisoning, for example.
It’s still similar. Radon concentrations in medieval dwellings would never reach the kind of concentrations you can see in modern homes because they leaked far more air. I wouldn’t necessarily call a tight home refining or enriching but it’s still dramatically increasing the concentration.
Tunnels and caves could still be problematic though there’s a lot of gasses that can cause problems in such environments.
Xkcd radiatorn chart:
https://xkcd.com/radiation/
Inhaling/ingesting concentrated radioactive substances is a big danger with that kind of thing. There are so many variables and it's hard to measure. Health effects depend on where it ends up within the body.