Radium Girls

I did some Radiation Safety Training today because I'm going to be working with radioactivity (everybody run!). We learned some scary things in the class about the early days of radioactive fun. Back at the turn of the (20th) century nobody knew how bad it was for you so they used it for all kinds of fun things and in very high doses (with no attempt to provide protection from it). In fact, one of the early units of measurement was Erythema Dose, which is how long it takes to turn your hand red (dang!). They took X-rays of your feet when you tried on shoes, took X-rays of famous people's skulls as a novelty, offered it to eliminate the need for shaving, and offered "Radium" pills as a cure-all. Note: radiation really is a good cure for cancer (e.g. 'radiation treatment') but obviously you wouldn't want it unless you had cancer - or unless you believe in 'hormesis' (that radiation is good for you).

One of the interesting (and very sad) things that happened during this era was that someone made the discovery that if you make paint radioactive, it glows in the dark. So naturally they started painting watch faces and compasses and marketing them (this is where 'glow-in-the-dark' comes from). Young middle-class girls were hired to paint the watch faces, and to make the job easier they would lick the paint brush heads to make the tip finer. These girls (pictured at left) were called Radium Girls and eventually began to glow in the dark themselves (looking like ghosts at night). Not knowing it was bad for them, they would also paint their nails and one reportedly painted her teeth before a big date (wouldn't you?). Needless to say, they eventually started having big problems so the guy who owned the factory closed up shop and moved on to another city. To convince the girls that the paint was ok, he ate it. Eventually, about four cities later (and thousands of girls exposed), he died of cancer.

FYI - by the '30s it was becoming clear that radiation is in fact bad for you, and by the '50s the radiation regulations that are still in place today were set to protect people who work with radiation on a daily basis (and the general public). As a researcher, I am only allowed to be exposed to an amount that is definitely well under what would ever cause any problems (and researchers generally are exposed to nothing anyway).