Radium

 

Radium (Ra) is an element with the number 88 on the periodic table. When freshly prepared it is a brilliant white metal that quickly darkens when exposed to the air. It glows in the dark, giving a faint bluish-green luminescence.

It was discovered in 1898 by the double Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie (1867-1934), who failed to recognise just how dangerous it was. She was unaware that it was a million times more radioactive than uranium and highly carcinogenic. She regularly handled radium and other radioactive elements without taking protective measures and even kept lumps of radium in her desk because she liked the way it glowed. Her work undoubtedly led to her death from a form of leukaemia, and even today some of her personal papers have to be stored in lead-lined cases and are considered to be too dangerous to handle without wearing protective clothing.

During the years before the full dangers presented by radium were appreciated, it would take the lives of many more people who worked with it in ignorance of the dangers to which they were unwittingly exposed.

Radium was added to many patent medicines and products such as hair cream and toothpaste, because the glow was thought to indicate health-giving properties, when the precise opposite was the case.

In 1917, the US Radium Corporation produced a brand of luminous paint called Undark, invented by Dr Sabin von Sochocky. The corporation supplied the US military with it in the form of luminescent watch dials and instrument faces. Although the company’s managers and scientists protected themselves by using lead screens and protective clothing when handling radium, these precautions were not extended to their employees, who were mainly young women hired to paint the watch dials with radium paint.

The girls were so impressed by the luminescence of Undark that they used it as make-up and to decorate their fingernails. One radium worker is known to have painted her teeth with it before going on a date, so that her smile would glow in the dark.

Encouraged by their managers, the workers regularly shaped their brushes by using their lips and tongues, which led many of them ingesting considerable quantities of radium.

The results were devastating, with many of the women developing mouth cancers, bone fractures and what was termed “radium jaw”, a type of necrosis. There were hundreds of premature deaths.

When these cases were brought to public attention, the company denied the claims and organised a medical cover-up. Eventually, justice was done when the subsequent court case became a cornerstone of labour safety law.

Radium also took the life of the inventor of Undark. Dr von Sochocky died in 1928 from aplastic anaemia, the same disease that would kill Marie Curie in 1934.

© John Welford