![]() ![]() But this fell on deaf ears at companies eager to make quick and easy profits from their radium-enriched products. In the early 1900s, literature began to be published explaining how potentially harmful radium was. If you were exposed to radium-226, your body would continue to be ravaged by the radioactive poisoning until long after death. So what did this mean for the people exposed to radium? As the paint at the watch factory contained radium-228, the workers dealing with this material were poisoned, with the damage taking six years to weaken in strength by half. Another isotope is mesothorium, or radium-228, which has a half-life of six years. That means it takes 1,600 years for the radium’s radioactive properties to deteriorate to half of its original strength. The most stable isotope, now known as radium-226, has a half-life of 1,600 years. What they found was that radium had different isotopes depending on the number of neutrons they were made up of. The radioactive isotopes of radium were first discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898. But few in the manufacturing industry were paying attention. The paint was applied to the hands and markings of watch dials so that they could be read at night.Īround the same time, the dangers of radium were being discovered and made public. The recommended dose was to drink five to seven glasses of radioactive water per day.Īnother use for radium was as an ingredient to make paint glow-in-the-dark. Supposedly, a person could buy the jar, fill it with water and enjoy the benefits of radium-infused water. One such product was an expensive glass jar lined with radium. Beauty and health products were soon popping up, advertising radium as a special ingredient. Suddenly radium was seen as a miracle cure, and this is how it was marketed to the public. They found that radium, a chemical element present in uranium, could be used against cancerous tumors and kill diseased tissue. just how far a company will go to avoid responsibility.Īt the turn of the twentieth century, scientists made a breakthrough discovery.the devastating effects of radium poisoning and. ![]() ![]() what the dangerous practice of lip pointing is.In this summary of The Radium Girls by Kate Moore, you’ll discover Ultimately this story is still relevant today, as there continues to be far too many companies that care more about their bottom line than the health and well-being of their employees. Once the cause of the worker’s suffering was understood, a David-and-Goliath battle broke out between corporate lawyers and those hired to represent the workers, who at this point were quickly dwindling in number. While this is a sad story, it’s also one of amazing perseverance. But to hear the true story of the radium girls is to hear just how willfully negligent an employer could be inflicting all manner of horrible suffering upon its workers – some of whom were still teenagers. It may be reasonable to assume that any legitimate job would come with safe working conditions, and that an employer would not knowingly put employees in harm’s way. ![]()
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