Element of the day: Radium
In this new blog series called "Element of the Day," I plan to explore the history and uses of the elements in the periodic table. One element will be talked about in each post. The first element covered in this new series is radium!
Pierre and Marie Curie in 1895, both of whom discovered radium. Marie would eventually succumb to its radioactive properties when dying in 1934.
Discovery of Radium
At atomic number 88 lies a historically significant element called radium. It was discovered in 1898 by the famous Pierre and Marie Curie, and named from the Latin word radius due to its power of emitting high-energy rays. In Marie Curie's words, "one of our joys was to go into our workroom at night when we perceived the feebly luminous silhouettes of the bottles and capsules." Radium's green luminescence is caused by its radioactivity. These radioactive elements have unstable nucleus's that degrade over time and release energy. In its pure form, radium is a silvery white metal; however, it oxidizes when exposed to air and turns dark in color.
After the discovery of radioactivity in the early 20th century, it became regarded as a "miracle cure." Radium-infused bath salts were sold and believed to boost energy. Additionally, radium creams were thought to combat aging and radium toothpastes would whiten teeth. Of course, this all had the complete opposite effect. By the 1920s, it became apparent that radium was causing cancers, especially in bones where the radium would replace calcium.
The Radium Girls of the 1920s
The most notable application of radium is for luminous glow-in-the-dark watch hands. A paint mixture containing zinc sulfide and radium can glow in the dark for several years. However, the relatively harmless zinc sulfide degrades rather quickly and is why most historical radium watch hands no longer glow. The radium itself has a half-life of 1,602 years (half-life is the time taken for an amount of radioactive product to decrease to half its original value), meaning that these watches would remain toxic for an extremely long time.
In the 1910s, shortly after the Curies had discovered radium, a corporation called U.S. Radium started to combine radium with paint in order to produce a product called Undark. This radium-infused paint emitted a greenish-white light at night. U.S. Radium promoted Undark for clock dials in order to create glow-in-the-dark watches. At the time, young women with steady hands were employed for this job. These women were told to use the paint without precautions and to frequently lick the brushes with their tongues to produce sharp lettering on the watches.
It did not take long for the radium workers to begin complaining of jaw pain, fatigue, skin problems, and tooth problems. In the late 1920s, medical investigations elucidated that the bones in their jaws had necrosed, their tongues had been scarred by the radiation emitted from the radium, and many had become anemic (low healthy red blood cell count) which is a sign of bone marrow damage. Some of these workers were even found to have their faces and hair glowing in the dark with radioactivity. Throughout the following decades, hundred of women suffered from the presence of radium-induced cancerous tumors, notably sarcomas and leukemias.
In 1927, a group of five severely afflicted women in New Jersey, called the "radium girls" by the media, sued U.S. Radium. All of them were suffering from jaw, skin, and tooth necrosis. One year later, each of these girls was compensated with $10,000 and an additional $600/year to cover for living and medical costs. Unfortunately, all of the radium girls died of leukemia and other types of cancers soon after their case was settled.
