Have I ingested or inhaled tritium?

Hi guys,

Let me start of with apologising if I have misunderstood things.

After buying a watch with radium, I started reading quite a bit (and watching the lecture on the HSNY) on this forum regarding potential dangers etc. From what I gather, the consensus is that it should be quite safe if the watch is kept in a ventilated room. I know that there are numerous threads on this topic, but I could not find one with my specific issue.

But when reading about this, I remembered that when I purchased a vintage Speedmaster a while back, I got the original tritium hands in a plastic bag, on a piece of hard paper and stuck on some fixing mass.

Before I let my watchmaker install the hands, I brought them out from the packaging (still on the paper though) to look at the lume and to photograph it. I might have inspected the hands through a loupe as well.

I never actually touched the hands or tritium (but the packaging obviously).

I read on this forum that tritium is safe "as long as it is not inhaled/ingested".

So my question is, have I inhaled or ingested tritium by looking at my Speedmaster tritium hands in a room - or do the dangers with inhaling only occur when tritium is in gas form?

I am super worried that I have somehow exposed myself to danger and a risk of cancer through my carelessness.

On the other hand, the are several videos of watchmakers removing tritium hands without any protection. So I am a bit confused.

Many thanks in advance

How old are the tritium hands. From my knowledge it's not dangerous like radium. Also, you would have to consider the half life of it.

Let's say they are from the late 60s, they should only be circa 6% of original strength

The watch is from 1967 so I would guess this is the case with the hands as well.

It should only very small amount of radioactivity compared to original amounts.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium

Tritium decays via beta particles that only penetrate the first layer of dead skin anyway (6nm or so). It also flakes much less readily than radium. You do more damage by walking through a cloud of car exhaust.

The only thing I know is that it is safe if unopened. I have never done anymore research than this.

If you live in the US you probably ingest worse things in the public water.

If you get old enough, you will get some form of Cancer anyway. So, enjoy your time leading up to this stage. If you want to shorten that, I have around 100 x NOS Radium hands for military watches in an alloy box somewhere.... Checked the closed box with the Geiger. All good.

Thank you to everyone who has answered. I am also choosing to interpret the mockery to my favour, i.e. that I have overreacted. So it's all good.

While I was aware that the exposure was really low, if any, tritium is radioactive and I assume that smoke from cars are not. I have limited competence in these fields, so my worry was somehow that these particles are entering my body and staying there and attacking the body, thus over time giving cancer. Or something to that effect.

Even though I have not been given a scientific answer (which is probably too much to ask on a watch forum), I am concluding that I should not worry. Thank you to everyone who has taken me seriously.