Source: “The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off”. Radithor was marketed as an “elixir of life.” Unlike a lot of competing products in the radium beverage space, Radithor was a premium product that promised certified radioactive water. Perhaps the most infamous radium product was Radithor, a beverage created by Bailey Radium Laboratories. Irradiated tablets were sold to the general public, to say nothing of radium-themed suppositories.
Radium jaw full#
This translated to its adoption by the medical community.ĭoctors praised the supposed medicinal effects of radium without knowing its full effects, touting the rejuvenating powers of irradiated metal. Radium’s integration also created a feedback loop that bolstered its credibility. It was laterally integrated into nearly every existing product space: cigarettes, toothpaste, hair cream, butter, blankets, fertilizer, cosmetics, etc. Businesses were quick to take its initial applications and create a whole host of radium-themed products and branding-the more coveted ones actually containing the element. Radium was used a plot device in fiction, a beauty standard, even a topic for religious sermons. What is less known is how deeply integrated radium was into daily life. They then conspired to create a mass coverup to hide the ill-effects of working with the technology. The United States Radium Corporation tried to blame Mollie Maggia’s death by radium poisoning on a misdiagnosis of syphilis. The employers of radium girls initially tried to ignore, gaslight, and shift blame about the adverse effects of radium exposure, and their part in it. The horrific symptom of a jaw rotting off occurred enough that the term “radium jaw” was coined. Before death, ulcers, lesions, sarcomas, the dissolving of tissue and honeycombing of bone occurred. This led to horrible injuries and tragic and extremely painful deaths. Over time, radium built up in these women’s bodies. They were instructed to use their mouths to form a fine tip on the paintbrushes used to apply radium paint. Radium girls were women who were coerced by their male superiors to meet the demands of society and technology. Radium’s public perception also gave the job a sense of glamor. Radium’s technological applications afforded radium dial painters a salary that enabled a semblance of financial freedom. This deceptively cool-sounding name describes a working-class job that was highly desirable at the time. Readers may also be familiar with Radium Girls. Source: Radium Dials by Arma95 on Wikimedia Commons. Readers of this post may be familiar with one of its more infamous uses: painting it on watches to create glow-in-the-dark dials. It glows with a distinct, eerie green color. Radium’s most obvious property is its luminosity. The general public was quick to follow, and amplify this enthusiasm.
Its unique properties came to represent modernity, industrialization, and technological advancement. Extraction needs to be conducted at scale, due to only trace amounts being present in the ore it is extracted from.Īfter its discovery, scientists hailed it as a miracle element. This lead her to correctly anticipate it containing additional radioactive properties.Įxtracting radium is a complicated and involved process that requires a team of trained professionals. Curie noticed that pitchblende in its unrefined state was more radioactive than the uranium that was separated from it. Radium was discovered in working with the known properties of pitchblende. To produce radium, you need to extract it from pitchblende, an ore that contains uranium. Radium was discovered in 1898 by Polish chemist Marie Sklodowska Curie.
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