Anyone know what to do with an old smoke alarm?

This smoke alarm, installed in my home some 27 years
before we bought the house, gave out on the first day
of 2018.


At 1:50 a.m. Jan. 1, 2018, my smoke alarm decided it had had enough. It sounded off for a few seconds, long enough to wake me up, but not long enough for me to register what that noise was. I just thought it was something I had dreamed.

So I rolled over to go back to sleep. And then the alarm went off again, this time for a longer duration. I was fully awake then, and so was my husband. We wandered around the house looking for something on fire — or at least smoking — and found nothing. Then the alarm went back off. Over the next few hours, the alarm, which is hardwired into our house, would go off every 20 minutes or so for several seconds, then go back out.

About four hours later, we were both feeling pretty confident there was no fire. My husband turned off the breaker to the smoke alarm and we got an hour or two of sleep. The next day, we bought a new one, took down the old and put in the new. We are fire safe once again.

The old smoke alarm, which, according to the log date on the back, had been up on the wall since the mid 1970s, had a warning sticker on it saying that it contained a small amount of radioactive material.

So I did a web search looking for the best way to dispose of it. Most sites recommended calling our city offices to see what their policy is. It turns out that our particular city has none.

"Most people just throw them away," my husband was told by more than one city official.

So ever since, I've been searching for advice on the best way to dispose of the old alarm. Anyone have any ideas?


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