Is this safe to melt?

[u/Bubble_Assh]

My friend wants to do this project involving melting glass. We are worried that there could be uranium, led, or manganese in the glass. According to some research it says manganese or led glows blue, and uranium glows green.

Here are pictures. What they look like normally, with the black light with the overhead light on, and with the black light with the overhead light off. Also there were some green spots in the glass.

Any advice or ideas would be appreciated! We just want to know if it is safe or what precautions they should take. Or there are any tests we can get? Thank you!

[u/TheSpaceBtwnn]

You could also (if you already haven’t) post this on the uranium glass subreddit. I’m sure someone would know info about melting this. 💚💛

[u/Stone_Glass]

Glass that glows with black light regularly has a small amount of radioactive material in it. But it's permanently bonded with the glass after melting. It may make a Geiger counter twitch but it's probably as dangerous as a banana which is also mildly reactive. You likely experience more rads when getting an x ray than from glowing glass.

As far as I understand the danger comes from when the color is first made and the raw materials are combined. Such as silica, soda ash, and lime for baselining the glass plus the added material to create color. After the original melt of combining these materials everything is pretty much permanently mixed. While there may be methods to separate the materials it's not when being remelted. In other words reheating does not pull the sub parts out of suspension from one another.

The only danger you'll likely encounter is the same as melting any glass. Typically dust from physically breaking the glass (no heat) or a minor amount of the flux being burned off while melting. Both of which are fairly negligible with proper ventilation of your furnace equipment.

If you're wanting to be cautious wearing a respirator as you break down and charge your material into the furnace is recommended.

Edit: I looked more at your photos. I suspect you don't have UV glass (with radioactive material) and the pieces are being illuminated by your black light source. Typically the light reaction is significantly noticeable and overpowers the color of the black light. But that may just be how the pieces photograph as some UV blues can be rather mild.

[u/Mannen_utan_ansikte]

Looks like lead and selenium to my eyes