This is plain WRONG and DANGEROUS.

The issue is NOT the Americum but the natural degration of the photoelectric cells and the accumulation of dirt within the test chamber.

Even before that time the risk for false alarms is increased substantially by degration before the chances for sucessful alarming decrease rapidly. Due to that they actually withstand aging actually worse than ionisation based devices.

Sientific sources?

Here

here.

Here

Here

(Besides: Americum has a decay time of over 400 years,btw)

This is anecdotical but I moved into an apartment with a 30 year old ionizing smoke detector, and the failure was it was too sensitive, I assume because there were less electrons being emitted from the radioactive element, any faint smoke caused it to go off. Eventually it got into a state where it would always be in an alert state, and was beeping 100% of the time, which was when the landlord finally replaced it.

My assumption with the 10 year replacement recommendation for Americium based smoke detectors is to replace it before it becomes too sensitive and annoying, because they were worried some people would remove the battery and just live without an active smoke detector.

Alec in his own video mentions that the issue isn't that the Americium decays, but that the electronics themselves age and fail, which applies to both the ionization detectors and photoelectric detectors.

This is one of the things you just don't wanna mess with, as such a failure is completely unpredictable, and from what I know some manufacturers are even beginning to make detector units with non-replaceable batteries, intended to be replaced whole when the battery dies after years of runtime, to make it impossible to keep using a detector after its rated lifetime.

I was about to link to the same video. From what I remember though both types have strength and weaknesses in regards to the type of fire.

Edit: watched it again so ionization smoke detectors are better at detecting active fire, although his conclusion is that the benefit is not as big and overall photoelectric ones are better.

A motion to rename every element that's named after a place. All in favor updoot, all opposed downdoot

That's a reasonable reaction to the current state of things.

Photoelectric smoke detectors also need to be replaced every ten years or so, and the radioactivity of ionization alarms is well within safe levels as long as you aren't taking them apart to eat the ^241^Am. They're sensitive to different things but the photoelectric ones are probably better suited to modern home fires (but they're more prone to false-positives from kitchen smoke).

Pointless America Bad and radiation fear-mongering.

They always wait until night.

They always wait until nighttime.

Maybe, if it is made past a certain date. Mine in the image, from 2005, did not.

Yes.

Not only that, the current generation of smoke detectors have sealed batteries so you can't even open them up to change batteries or anything. So once they expire in 10 years they start their incessant "I'm dying" non-stop beeping - that's when you dispose of the entire smoke detector and buy a new one.

I've read that they don't detect smoke as well after 10 years anyway (e.g. even more false alarms) so it's probably for the best to get rid of old ones.

Your landlord's responsibility, your problem

It's ok, they can paint over the smoke damage and get a new tenant.

I work in EMS. When we respond to house fires in the middle of the night there's kind of two different ways they go. When people have smoke detectors and their house catches on fire in the middle of the night they're the ones who call us and we get on scene to find them outside their home in their pajamas, watching their house burn, very shaken up but ok. They never need anything from us ambulance-wise except maybe some blankets. When people don't have smoke detectors in their homes and they catch on fire in the middle of the night a neighbor or passer-by calls the fire in and we get on scene and the firefighters are dragging bodies out to us.

If you are asleep and your house catches fire, the idea is that the smoke detector will wake you up with enough time hopefully to escape the fire. That is really their primary purpose.

Some European countries do require them. Germany and Britain require smoke detectors in all residential buildings, for example.

They are mandatory in Ireland, so please stop the "Europe" stuff.

House fires were a huge cause of death and in apartment blocks they also can let one person's mistake kill hundreds of others.

Detect fires, save lives.

In Germany they are mandatory for a while now. And at least my landlord sends a company to check if they still work every year, so I assume that's mandatory too.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/347808687_Analysis_of_the_effectiveness_of_the_smoke_alarm_obligation_-_Experiences_from_practice has an overview of the regulations and an analysis of the impact in Germany.

Here in France rentals must have them, I believe. But I've never known anybody whose home caught fire. Maybe it has to do with building materials and regulations? In my région buildings are stone. My house had 90cm-thick granite walls. Radon is a bigger concern than fire.

Other countries use less flammable materials in their construction. Wood frame construction is very common in the US due to drastically lower cost of wood vs block. We also had something called balloon frame construction for many years which made it much more likely for fire to travel within the walls. That being said not having detectors isn't a great idea either since most are combo smoke and carbon monoxide detectors.