THE HIDDEN DANGER OF MANTLE LAMPS

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In return, Wagner's suit claims that 1,000 persons have already suffered cancer or birth defects through improper use of the mantles . . . that 1,000 more will be stricken as a result of past exposure . . . and that manufacturers have been negligent by failing to warn users and to advise them of safety precautions that might have lessened or prevented injury.

Perhaps the welcome white light for nighttime reading isn't as necessary—or as benign—as we thought.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Walter Wagner, the radiation physicist who initiated the mantle suit against the Coleman Company and others, is the discoverer of the first piece of substantial evidence of the existence of magnetic monopoles, subatomic particles previously thought to exist but sought after for many years without success. Wagner's breakthrough occurred in 1975, while he was working on a physics experiment at the University of California at Berkeley.

NOTE: All readings were taken with the Radiation Alert Monitor 4 detector from a measuring distance of 1/8 inch. All readings were averaged during a 30-second exposure time. The Coleman 220 was taken on a camping trip during the three-day test interval, during which it was burned outdoors for about 36 hours . . . while the Coleman 5114 remained unlighted back in the laboratory. It's interesting to note that there's quite a difference between the three-day readings for the two lamps, both of which are equipped with a pair of mantles.

WHAT'S HOT . . . AND WHAT'S NOT

When MOTHER'S staffers decided to test lantern mantles far radiation while checking out Mary Anderson's story, we asked Walter Wagner for some tips on exactly what we should be looking for. He said that—with the right equipment—we should be able to record radioactivity emanating from the mantles at several stages . . . in the package, out of the package, during the preburn phase, and several days later when the thorium coating produces radium as a decay product.

Thus informed, we turned to the folks at Solar Electronics—a group connected with The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee—for advice about how to monitor the mantles. They furnished us with a Solar Electronics-made instrument—the Radiation Alert Monitor 4—which turned out to be a small, hand-held radiation detector that's sensitive to a broad spectrum of ionizing radiation . .. including alpha and beta particles, gamma rays, and X-rays.

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