The Breitling Watch Source Forums

I hear it's all the rage.

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SHARKMAN

Well I personally wouldn't fancy doing that as deeply inhaling a quantity of tritium is one of the best (i.e. worst!) ways of increasing the risk of radiation damage from tritium. That said, the risk of danger from broken tritium watch tubes is extremely small due to three reasons - firstly tritium is a beta emitter which is not dangerous to humans externally due to it's low engery. Secondly the tubes found on watch dials are very small and the amount of tritium in them is extremely tiny, and thirdly the tritium inside the tubes is gaseous which, as it's lighter than air, means it disperses very quickly.

Obviously if you were to take a handful of tubes, crunch them up in your mouth and swallow them, then yes you will be opening yourself up to an appreciable hazard - and not only from the tritium, but also from the phosphors used to coat the inside of the tubes and no least the glass of the tubes themselves!

Personally though I would exercise caution with any radioactive source. So if I was working with a tritium dial and accidentially broke a tube or two, I would immediately stand back and ensure the area was well aerated (such as opening a window) for a few minutes. Then I'd be sure to clean up and dispose of the broken parts carefully and appropriately, and then I'd thoroughly wash my hands afterwards, being sure not to touch my face in the meantime. IMO even a very small risk is a still a risk, and with a few simple precautions you can minimise it as much as possible.

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Driver8

Site Moderator

The easiest way to test this is to look at a Chronomat, hold it directly under a light for a few seconds, and look at it again. If the top does not mimic the others, it may be tritium. If at night its lume does not fade over a period of a few minutes to a few hours, it is probably not SuperLume. If it is SL, then when you hit it with light, it will glow more, and when you deprive it of light it will gradually fade. If it is tritium (or a few others), it will have a constant glow regardless of what light you feed it/deprive it.

Radium and tritium are completely separate, and the reason that the US legislated tritium imports has nothing to do with the radium girls, it's because they decided about 70 years after the radium problems that all nuclear material had to be regulated regardless of whether it's tritium in watches or weapons grade plutonium.

The half life of tritium is a little less that 12 1/2 years so it's service life is most definitely not coming to an end after 10 years, it still has more than 50% of it's original lume at that point.

The easiest way to determine whether a modern watch has tritium or super luminova lume has nothing to do with charging it up, it will tell you on the dial - many manufacturers choose to declare Super Luminova with an L on the dial, usually at the bottom near Swiss Made, but with tritium it is mandatory to declare, the exact markings varying depending on the amount of tritium used - T or T25 are common.

Tritium has a service life which ends at about 10-15 years. Even the best tritium night sites only guarantee 15 years. But you look at night sites at 10 years, they are at a point in which most users will opt to replace them because significant visibility has been lost. 50% light emission isn't all that great, especially on pistol sites which use a similar size dot to a smaller watch. At 15 years, you can't see much of anything.

I suppose it is possible that different materials are used by country, but that is the way to be positive by personally testing it rather than just relying on markings. Light reactivity (or lack of) is the only way to be positive.

Breitling is not using tritium.

I didn't think so given the disadvantages of tritium and their past with the NRC. I worked with tritium sites for years...they are not all that great for longevity.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-colle ... 98163.html
(Summary: "Distribution of H-3 in watches without license." from 07/10/1998)

All models with that bezel style says "sapphire protected tritium dot" which is apparently a legacy wording. I just tested one and it is not tritium.

I know, I've been saying that for a while!

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Been playing with my new 44 GMT for a week now, and can confirm that it is definitely not tritium, the light output is inconsistent. Pretty much what's been said already ... just wanted to do a +1.