![]() Knowing very well that UnDark’s key ingredient was approximately one million times more active than uranium, they were careful to avoid any exposure to it themselves. Radium Corporation were probably the worst. It is about three times as abundant as uranium.īut the most baffling part about this story is not the fact that the general public had no idea that radium was so dangerous, but the fact that some people most certainly did! And yet, they sat back and watched as everyone around them was poisoning themselves. The line included lip-sticks, face cream, soap, powder, and toothpaste containing thorium and radium. Thorium is predicted to be able to replace uranium in nuclear reactors and can be used as a source of nuclear power. Alfred Curie (who was no relation to Marie Curie, but his name sold French women on the idea of radioactive make-up), subsequently setting the trend over in America too. ![]() In Paris, a cosmetic range called Tho-Radia became all the rage, developed by Dr. (The advertisement fails to mention a common side effect of your urine glowing in the dark).Įven products that didn’t actually contain the medical “cure-all” ingredient tried to fraudulently market their products to imply they were somehow radio-active. At the dawn of the 20th century, radium was America’s favourite new miracle ingredient, and radium-based household commercial products had become the norm, from cold remedies and toothpaste to wool for babies, children’s toys and even drinking water. It was a time in history when the dangers of radiation were not well understood by the general public. von Sochocky, died himself in 1928 from his exposure to the radioactive material. It’s still unknown how many died from exposure to radiation but it’s clear how many could have been saved. and Canada alone to paint watch faces after the initial success in developing a glow-in-the-dark radioactive paint. At the dawn of the 1920s, an estimated total of 4,000 workers were hired by corporations in the U.S. Radium Corporation hired around 70 women from Essex County, NJ, and by 1927, more than 50 of those women had died as a direct result of radium paint poisoning that was eating their bones from the inside, to put it simply. In their downtime, some even messed about painting their nails, teeth and faces with the luminous paint, marketed under the brand name “UnDark”.īetween 19, the U.S. They were paid the modern equivalent of $0.27 per watch dial, so the harder they worked, unknowingly swallowing deadly amounts of poison each time to make a few extra pennies, the faster death would approach. The women were told that the glow-in-the-dark radioactive paint was harmless, and so they painted 250 dials a day, licking their brushes every few strokes with their lips and tongue to give them a fine point. They were small-town girls from New Jersey who had been hired by a local factory to paint the clock faces of luminous watches, the latest new army gadget used by American soldiers. The Radium Girls were so contaminated that if you stood over their graves today with a Geiger counter, the radiation levels would still cause the needles to jump more than 80 years later.
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