Hydrogen isotope biogeochemistry spectroscopic lines for publishable data, Murphy and Urey paired with Ferdinand Brickwedde and distilled a more concentrated pool of heavy hydrogen, known today as deuterium. This work on hydrogen isotopes won Urey the 1934 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Also in 1934, scientists Ernest Rutherford, Mark Oliphant, and Paul Harteck, produced the radioactive isotope tritium by hitting deuterium with high energy nuclei. The deuterium used in the experiment was a generous gift of heavy water from the Berkeley physicist Gilbert N Lewis. Bombarding deuterium produced two previously undetected isotopes, helium-3 and hydrogen-3. Rutherford and his colleagues successfully created tritium, but incorrectly
Tritium in drinking water vary from country to country. Some figures are given below: The American limit is calculated to yield a dose of 4.0 millirems (or 40 microsieverts in SI units) per year. This is about 1.3% of the natural background radiation (roughly 3,000 μSv). The beta particles emitted by the radioactive decay of small amounts of tritium cause chemicals called phosphors to glow. This radioluminescence is used in self-powered lighting devices called betalights, which are used for night illumination of firearm sights, watches, exit signs, map lights, knives and a variety of other devices. Tritium has replaced radioluminescent paint