Intact Radium clocks and watches are generally relatively safe
#Radium poisoning from their watches skin#
Alpha radiation from Radium 226 paint can be stopped by paper and human skin – and so is really only problematic if ingested or inhaled (hence the deadly impact on the Radium Girls).Radium 226 emits alpha, beta and gamma radiation: Radium 226 has an incredibly long half-life of around 1600 years, meaning that its radioactivity will not reduce noticeable over a person’s lifetime. And to answer it properly, we have to go back to some basic radiation science… The science But does it follow that Radium clocks and watches are inherently dangerous? The story of the Radium Girls is rather sobering. Sadly, this was too late for many of the women, an unknown number of whom died from radiation poisoning. By 1924, 50 women who had worked at the US Radium Corporation plant in New Jersey were ill, and a dozen had died.Īfter a protracted legal process, the Radium Girls were awarded compensation, with the litigation establishing legal precedents and triggering the enactment of regulations governing labour safety standards. In 1923, the first dial painter died, and before her death, her jaw fell away from her skull. Dental pain, loose teeth, lesions and ulcers were the first signs, followed by anaemia, bone fractures, and necrosis of the jaw, a condition now known as Radium jaw. Being unaware of the true nature of Radium, some of the Radium Girls also painted their nails, teeth and faces with the Radium paint.Īs a result, the factory workers ingested deadly amounts of Radium – with many becoming sick with radiation poisoning.
Because the brushes would lose their shape after a few strokes, the women were instructed to “point” their brushes on their lips (“lip, dip, paint”), in order to give them a fine tip. The Radium Girls, as they were afterwards termed, were not informed of the dangers associated with the Radium paint.Įach of the painters used a camel hair brush to apply the glowing paint onto dials. The attraction of this paint was that it was self-luminous – it glowed in the dark. As WWI was just beginning, a group of women, working at factories in New Jersey, Illinois and Connecticut, were given the task of painting watch dials with Radium paint.
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