An image of Pierre Curie in 1906 .[Wikipedia]
The Discovery of Radium
Marie Curie in 1920 [Wikipedia]
Marie and her husband Pierre Curie discovered radium in 1898 and it was instantly promoted as the cure all. It was added to toothpaste, water, food, and cosmetics, and had little regulation. Radium was used in many beauty products based on the idea that it would help people and cure many diseases. It it was used to help fight cancer, fever, gout, and constipation. People drank radium water or visited radium clinics and spas.
An advertisment for a radium company in New York. [The Atlantic, 2013].
This company specialized in extracting and purifying radium from carnotite to produce luminous paints, which were manufactured under the brand Undark. The plant employed hundreds of workers, mainly women, to paint radium watches that were used as fashion accessories or aircraft instruments so they could read them in the dark. When the radium dial painting studios opened girls as young as 14 applied to work their painting numbers on watch faces. Radium was very costly to obtain, so the radium dial painters were grateful to have a high paying job working with the expensive substance. Workers at U.S Radium Corporation were expected to paint 250 dials a day, work five and a half days a week and they earned $20 a week. Although this was a well paid job workers started to experience medical issues due to working with radium.
"They worked at four rows of tables extending practically the length of the room. Each girl worked a few feet away from the girl next to her and a few feet away from the girl at the opposite side of the table. Each girl procured a tray containing twenty-four watch dials and the material to be used to paint the numerals upon them so that they would appear luminous. "
Women painting the watches. [The Spectator, 2016].
The women working at the company painting the dials were instructed that to keep a fine point they should use a technique called lip pointing. They placed the brush in between their lips and every time they did this they were ingesting a small bit of radium
A radium clock glowing in the dark. [Wikimedia, 2010].
"Radium is a naturally occurring radioactive metal. When exposed to it, the element causes lymphoma, bone cancer, leukemia, and aplastic anemia. Its extremely high levels of radioactivity make it a dangerous health concern. The maximum amount of radium the body can take is 0.1 micrograms. It is so dangerous that Marie Curie's notes on her discovery of radium are still so radioactive that they cannot be touched to this day."
[Seeker, 2017]