"The magic of radium"
At least it looked like magic. Radium was an element that glowed and that was part of its allure. Just ask the dial painters who later came to be known as "Ghost girls". However, glowing was not a problem for the "ghost girls", and they made the most of the sinister side effect. While mixing the paint, radioactive dust would fill the air and would end up on the girl's hair and clothes, and they loved it! They would put some on their cheeks to give them a pink "glow". They would wear their good dresses to the plant so they would be the ones shimmering and shining in the evening. They went as far as painting radium onto their teeth for a smile that would light up the dark. Therefore, it was no wonder that after a shift
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Doctors used it to treat everything from colds to cancer. Salesmen praised Radium as something that could extend people's lives and cure everything from arthritis to gout. People believed the hype and started taking it the same way as we take vitamins today. It did not take long for the commercial industry to jump on board as well. Radium was added to everyday products such as toothpaste, cosmetics and even food and drinks. One product, called Radithor, was distilled water with small amounts of radium dissolved in it and was advertised as "A Cure for the Living Dead" and "Perpetual Sunshine," The girls even believed they were getting healthier by working with the new wonder …show more content…
Some of the "ghost girls" started developing symptoms like fatigue and toothaches. Others had stillborn babies. For many though, it started with severe tooth decay. When the dentist would attempt to remove the rotten teeth, (already practically falling out of the girls’ mouths), their gums would not heal. Instead, ulcers would develop in the holes left behind. Very often their jawbones crumbled to the touch. One girl's entire lower jawbone had become so brittle that her doctor removed it by simply lifting it out. The radium was destroying the bone by literally drilling holes in their jaws. Some of the girls’ skin became paper-thin and would split open if scratched by a fingernail. Death was usually accompanied by violent hemorrhaging. You see, when ingested, radium is particularly dangerous: Chemically, radium behaves almost like calcium and since the body uses calcium to make bone, after radium is ingested it is mistaken for calcium and is incorporated into bone. The major health risk of ingesting radium is radiation-induced bone necrosis and bone cancers. How soon that happens depends upon the dose, but at the very high doses that the "ghost girls" were exposed to, it took just a few
In chapter 8 titled "Radium (Ra)" of The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum, the most interesting story developed within this chapter was the death of dial workers at Orange, New Jersey after been exposed to radium every day. It was interesting due to the fact that radium was used everywhere in the community and was never thought it could harm anyone. Radium was a super element that was used everywhere, but its continuous use unmasked its fatal habits. As it was stated in the text, "Radiant health, the ads proclaimed-beautiful skin, endless vigor, and eternal health—ingesting radium seemed the next best thing to drinking sunlight." (Blum 179). People were accepting radium as a natural gold element but they haven't realized constant contact
The "2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals" held that those business practices that have had a disparate impact effect on the older workers are now considered to be actionable under one national anti-discrimination law (Hamblett, 2004). The case does reaffirm a second Circuit precedent that had been set but which is at odds with what a majority of federal courts have held. The appeals court supported the idea that a layoff plan had been properly brought under the The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) although the company did not have the intention of discriminating.
During this time, the arms race started to progress because of the production. Brown took her time to interview people and look through archives to get the raw picture of what happened behind closed doors. The third part was “The Plutonium Disasters.” She brought light to how dangerous it was to work and live there, and most of the people in the camp did not know how it could affect their bodies. Dr. Herbert Parker, the head of the Health Physics Division, “estimated there were eight hundred million flakes of [plutonium], which, if sucked into workers’ lungs or [ingested], could lodge in soft organs and remain in the body for years, a tiny time bomb that Parker feared would produce cancer”
Al-Nafis, besides drawing on pharmacy and drugs used from around the world, introduced the idea of mathematical calculation of proper drug dosages, and Al-Razi building off that idea in al Hawi fit-Tibb included a section on pharmacy which pioneered chemotherapy with a variety of mineral drugs (Rahman). Prior to this, tumors were treated primarily with cauterization. Al-Zahrawi introduced many modern pharmacological treatments such as nasal sprays, mouth washes and hand creams. As already noted, sulfur was found an effective topical treatment for scabies, and opium (in modernity purified to morphine) an effective anaesthetic. Many other drugs discovered to have therapeutic use during the Golden Age of the Islamic Empire endure today—including the use of copper sulphate to heal open skin lesions (Stewart 127) and various unguents, plasters, counter-irritants, and pomades
In 1917 a young female right out of high school started working at a radium factory in Orange, New Jersey. The job was mixing water, glue and radium powder for the task of painting watch dials, aircraft switches, and instrument dials. The paint is newly inventive and cool so without hesitation she paints her nails and lips with her friends all the while not knowing that this paint that is making them radiant, is slowly killing them. This was the life of Grace Fryer. Today there are trepidations on the topic of radiation from fears of nuclear fallout, meltdowns, or acts of terrorism. This uneasiness is a result of events over the past one hundred years showing the dangers of radiation. Although most accidents today leading to death from radiation poisoning occur from human error or faults in equipment, the incident involving the now named "radium girls" transpired from lack of public awareness and safety laws. (introduce topics of the paper)
Hersey's Hiroshima was originally an article written for The New Yorker Magazine in order to help a "reader identity with deceased and survivors of the Hiroshima's bombing" (The New Yorker). He accomplished this by recapping the suffering of the victims of the atomic bomb. He wrote of the burn victims, "their faces were wholly burned, their eye sockets were hollow, the fluid from their melted eyes had run down their checks" (Hersey 51). "On some undressed bodies, the burns had made patterns of undershirt straps and suspenders…" (Hersey 29). He also wrote of the sicknesses that the radiation brought upon the Hiroshima victims, such as vomiting, abnormal growths on their skin and the list goes on. Mrs. Nakamura, "after one stroke, her comb carried with it a whole handful of hair" (Hersey 68). Mr. Tanimoto, "fell suddenly ill with a general malaise weariness, and feverishness" (Hersey 68). Father Kleinsorge, his wounds, "had suddenly opened wider and were swollen and inflamed" (Hersey 68). These are only a few of the many effects that the Japanese experienced due to the radiation of the atomic bomb.
Radon gas was found in the 1870s, when some scientists were mining for ore in Ore Mountains in Schneeberg, Saxony. The area has a high content of radon in the tunnels because the area has been mined since the 1470s. The scientists later discovered that 75% of the miners died from lung cancer but it did not shut down the tunnels until 1950.
Marie Curie opened the world up to the science of radioactivity. She discovered polonium and radium, two radioactive elements, and was the first person to ever win two Nobel prizes and in two different subject areas. To the modern world, her discovery of radium was significantly and forever changed our understanding of how matter (atoms) and energy (radiation) are related. Her efforts influenced and expanded theories dealing with fundamental science and brought in a new era of medical research and treatment.
Other citizens that had trouble handling the trauma caused by the bombs committed suicide. The survivors were continuously haunted by radiation. Not only did the radiation bring a lifetime of sickness, but it also increased the rates of various cancers. Birth defects for pregnant women at the time jumped considerably, and although it is still unknown if birth defects are passed down through generations, survivors of the bomb and their children will continue to face anxiety over the possibilities (7). It is devastating to know the atomic bombs caused those unable to live with the negative impact of the atom bombs to commit suicide, and other innocent Japanese civilians to have to live with life-long health issues from the negative effects of radiation that will undoubtedly last for several generations.
World Health Organization. (2006). Health Effects of the Chernobyl accident: an Overview. Retrieved November 1st, 2013 from http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/backgrounder/en/index.html
he found the number of alpha particles emitted per second by a gram of radium.
Uranium, a radioactive element, was first mined in the western United States in 1871 by Dr. Richard Pierce, who shipped 200 pounds of pitchblende to London from the Central City Mining District. This element is sorta boring but I found something interesting, they used it to make an an atomic bomb in the Cold War. In 1898 Pierre and Marie Curie and G. Bemont isolated the "miracle element" radium from pitchblende. That same year, uranium, vanadium and radium were found to exist in carnotite, a mineral containing colorful red and yellow ores that had been used as body paint by early Navajo and Ute Indians on the Colorado Plateau. The discovery triggered a small prospecting boom in southeastern Utah, and radium mines in Grand and San Juan counties became a major source of ore for the Curies. It was not the Curies but a British team working in Canada which was the first to understand that the presence of polonium and radium in pitchblende was not due to simple geological and mineral reasons, but that these elements were directly linked to uranium by a process of natural radioactive transmutation. The theory of radioactive transformation of elements was brilliantly enlarge in1901 by the New Zealand physicist Ernest Rutherford and the English chemist Frederick Soddy at McGill University in Montreal. At dusk on the evening of November 8, 1895, Wilhelm Rontgen, professor of physics at the University of Wurzburg in Germany, noticed a cathode tube that a sheet of paper come distance away. He put his hand between the tube and the paper, he saw the image of the bones in his hand on the paper.
The impact of nuclear power on the modern world has improved Various sectors of the economy and society .i.e. Food and Agriculture, Insect control, Food Preservation, Water Resources, Military, Medicine, Research and Industry. “In 1911 George de Hevesy conducted the first application of a radioisotope. At the time de Hevesy was a young Hungarian student working in Manchester with naturally radioactive materials. Not having much money he lived in modest accommodation and took his meals with his landlady. He began to suspect that some of the meals that appeared regularly might be made from leftovers from the preceding days or even weeks, but he could never be sure. To try and confirm his suspicions de Hevesy put a small amount of radioactive material into the remains of a meal. Several days later when the same dish was served again he used a simple radiation detection instrument - a gold leaf electroscope - to check if the food was radioactive. It was, and de Hevesy's suspicions were confirmed.
But In November 8, 1895 a moment that revolutionized the world of Science, Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen had discovered what he called X-rays. He was working in his laboratory operating one of Crooke’s tube which is the main source of cathode rays. The room was dark and when he exposed the rays he noticed that a paper made of barium platinocyanide was glowing. Rontgen try the experiment several times until he concluded that it was a new kind of ray rather than just light or electricity emitting from Crooke’s tube. He also concluded with his experiments that different kind of materials had a different degree of penetration depending on the density of the material. As he continued with his experiments he placed his wife’s hand on a image receptor and exposed the hand with the x-ray. The image was developed and was another proof of the discovery of x-rays when her hand showed the bones along with a ring she was wearing. During this time, Rontgen and his fellow colleagues didn't know about the fatal consequences of radiation. Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen died in Munich, Germany in February 10, 1923. The reason of his death was carcinoma of the intestines. Coincidence, probably
During the First World War, America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, which killed around 90,000 to 166,000 in Hiroshima and another 60,000 to 80,000 in Nagasaki. These include who died as a result of the force and excruciating heat from the blast and also death cause by acute radiation poisoning. This exposure to radiation also caused cancer and other radiation related diseases such as leukemia. Children born to the survivors are often reported to have small head size and mental disability, as well as their physical growth is