Spicy Antiques Roadshow: Uranium Glass and Radioactive Relics (emf2026)

In this talk I’ll introduce the history, science and art of uranium glass. It’s something that’s been around for more than a hundred years and is still made today. I’ll explain how uranium glass gets its glow under UV light, whether or not it’s safe to own (spoiler alert: absolutely safe) and why it exists in the first place. I’ll explore some of the history of uranium glass and its origins and I’ll demonstrate the glow of different types of antique glass -not just uranium.

But uranium glass isn’t the only thing to set off a Geiger counter in an antiques shop. We’ll look at other radioactive antiques you might find in a shop, at a car boot sale or even in your nana’s house. From ceramics to clocks and even fossils, radioactivity can be detected in lots of unexpected places! I’ll talk about the safety of these objects as well (spoiler alert 2: some are not quite as safe as uranium glass).

I’ll be available afterwards for questions. I’ll have a Geiger counter and a Radiacode spectrometer with me along with some of my collection of uranium glass and radioactive antiques. And you can hear the satisfying ‘click click click’ as we scan all the items!

Licensed to the public under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
about this event: https://www.emfcamp.org/schedule/2026/222-spicy-antiques-roadshow-uranium-glass-and-radioactive-relics