I have a 15g piece of luag (was planning on making it into a cabochon because I don’t have a faceting set up).

But I did not realize that luag is actually intrinsically radioactive when I bought it! (Because lutetium is naturally found with a mix of isotopes, one of which is radioactive). 

(Note- I have the Geiger counter set on the 0.1 setting to give the needle more dynamic range, so the reading is bouncing between 100-240 cpm not 1k-2k). A 15g piece of luag should be about 480 bq but the pancake Ludlum Geiger counter I am using is inefficient at detecting gamma rays, so that’s partially why the reading is lower than 480, but also the stone has internal  
Shielding on much of its beta emissions) 

I am kind of freaking out. I did some rough calculations to try to figure out the effective dose if I do end up making this into jewelry. What I calculated is that for a 15g piece, assuming I add a silver backing plate to completely block the beta radiation, then the gamma radiation would give a negligible whole body dose (0.0016 uSv per day) but the localized SKIN dose would be \~12.2 uSv per day— this still isn’t that much for  
Each single day but it works out to be about the equivalent skin dose to a dental xray every 50days of wear. And we don’t get multiple dental X-rays per year becuase that is considered dangerous).

I have ocd and now I am kind of freaking out about this and whether a piece this big is actually safe to wear. 

Also for people that facet luag- do you take extra precautions because the dust is radioactive, or since everything is wet anyways do you not do anything differently? 

Intrinsic radioactivity of luag