Ingesting radium: an outrageously dangerous job

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Nowadays we're all aware of the insane dangers of radioactivity. So, if you came across a job description asking you to "swallow small amounts of a highly toxic and radioactive substance all day long, 5 days a week", you certainly wouldn't apply, right?
         

As crazy as it sounds, this job used to exist! Women in the 1910s painted watch dials with a special radium-based paint that glowed in the dark.

All women or girls using radium paint with no protection or warnings in 1922, from- USRadiumGirls-Argonne1,ca1922-23-150dpi (cropped)
Unknown author / Public domain

These women kept their brushes pointy by constantly licking them, without knowing that the radium they were bringing into their bodies was extremely dangerous!

If you want to learn about the Radium Girls, the tragic health effects they faced and their brave fight for justice, the following book is a must read!

The Radium Girls by Kate Moore

Related videos, films TV series

If reading isn't your thing or if you want to complement your learning with other media, do check out the following recommendations!

1. The Radium Girls film Trailer --> film to be released later in 2020, postponed due to COVID

Original video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RxnIriKLRk by Movieclips Indie

2. Radioactive

Watch Rosamund Pike starring as Marie Curie, the famous Nobel Laureate and discoverer of Radium.

3. Chernobyl TV Series

Learn about the terrible nuclear disaster that took place in the Ukrainian part of the USSR in 1986, releasing a radioactive cloud that eventually expanded to other European countries. 
     
Original video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9APLXM9Ei8&t=5s by HBO

4. The Fukushima nuclear disaster

On March 2011 Japan was hit by a devastating earthquake and tsunami. The Fukushima nuclear power plant was hit badly and ended up with several dangerous explosions and nuclear meltdowns.

This video from The Infographics Show does some pretty good explaining of what actually happened!

Related Books

  • Half Lives: The Unlikely History of Radium by Lucy Jane Santos


Additional referenced sources (not previously quoted in the body of this post)

Comments

  1. Karol6 August 2020 at 12:10

    During 20s in US there was even an energy drink brand, containing radium: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor

    ReplyDelete

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