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You are continually getting radioactive sulfur and carbon into your lungs from coal--and they're beta emitters.

And, while people talk about Chernobyl and Fukushima, they never talk about coal fires that have been burning for decades in places like Centralia and Xinjian--which are WAY worse than all of our nuclear disasters.



Since the longest lived isotope of sulfur has a half-life of 87 days, those coal deposits must be REALLY young.


Not necessarily: the sulfur might be continually created from the decay of a radioisotope of longer half-life.


It's not.

Let's be clear: the claim that burning coal releases radioactive sulfur and carbon is wrong. There are radioactive materials released, but they are from contaminants like uranium and its decay products.




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