no they're not my photos, though they are very familiar. I think they are either custom keychains from iknitsteel or mattrg at cpfmarketplace forums (on the wts other personal type lights - sub forum)
to be realistic with yourself, those photos are over exposed, and you'll find it won't look quite as bright as that first picture.
Green is always the most brightest, and the larger vials usually provide plenty of illumination if you are using it as night marker. In fact, if you have night adapted vision they can seem almost to bright. My wife has complained in the past that when she wakes up in the middle of the night, there are too many bright and distracting things around the bedroom.
this is a long exposure. This is about the brightness you can expect to see in a pitch black room, with totally night adjusted eyes (lets say half an hour in the dark as a minimum) where you can Just see the reflections off the table. the camera is sensitive to blues, but in reality, the blue appears as one of the darkest colours, while green is the brightest.
Now this is really cheating with long exposures. Ive got a full rainbow in the left one; Green, ice blue, blue, blue, purple, pink, red, red, orange, yellow, yellow, white. In reality, we can never see it this bright. Unless your eyes are like edc, who can't sleep when his blue tritium is in the room.
I get my tritium from 2 people on a particular forum. I prefer to buy from these guys because they have a high turnover. High turnover means they order fresher stock more regularly and the glow is much stronger. Tritium from different orders several months apart already do show up with a difference in brightness, so ordering from places that keep stock for years won't be giving you the brightest tritium.
(as requested; I buy from B@rt, and kuku427. B@rt specifically sells tritium vials, while kuku427 sells titanium modification parts, and orders his own tritium to sell with his parts. I just order extra tritium when I get the parts he sells)
The cheaper shipping isn't super fast because of how far it has to travel (to me), but bart has been great to deal with. He's just been though some rough times recently.
The Type of radiation is not going to be able to penetrate far, most of the time the acrylic container will be enough to stop the radiation. If you do inhale the gas, which is the only way it can overcome the short range of effect, its passed out within 2 weeks, which is a very short time, with very localised effect only.
Radiation is something to be concerned about, but tritium (which exists naturally in the environment too), is not a very high risk source of radiation, and can quite easily be safely handled. The quantities involved are very small too.
I have couple of the green ones from DX mounted on my bedside lights, they are very bright and a pink one from DX on my girls light the pink is not as bright as the green. It makes them easy to find in the pitch dark.
For those in Europe it might be interesting that I bought my tritium here:
They have both vials and keyring fobs. Quality is good, shipping is very fast. Less than a week from UK to me in Germany.
If you break one, don't worry. Since Tritium is basically hydrogen, it is diluted almost instantaneously because of the high diffusion rate of hydrogen (around 3 m/s). So just air your room and you are fine.