Radium, once thought of as an elixir of health, masks unknown and deadly dangers. In “The Poisoner's Handbook: Killer Chemistry”, it discusses the case of the Radium Girls, specifically Amelia Magia. Amelia was one of the workers employed by the United States Radium Corporation in the 1920s. She and her co-workers were tasked with painting watch dials with radium-based paint. Unfortunately, they did not know about the dangers of radium and were encouraged to lick their paint brushes to keep them pointed. As a result, they ingested large amounts of radium. Over time, Amelia and her colleagues developed severe health issues including radiation poisoning, bone fractures, and radium necrosis. Shortly after, Amelia passed away along with several …show more content…
After this, radium began to quickly gain attention for its unique properties, including its ability to emit a steady glow without an external power source. Once this discovery was made, radium would be found in watches, aircraft switches, and clocks, so that they could be seen at night or in dark areas. Additionally, it would be in antique items such as clothing and dishes for aesthetic purposes or for some sort of medical application. However, as the harmful effects of radiation became more understood, regulations were put in place to limit its use and it was replaced with safer alternatives. In the present-day, radium is considered a by-product of other mining and processing operations, such as the extraction of uranium or rare earth metals. It is also naturally occurring and can be found in trace amounts of soil, rocks, and water. Even today, the discovery of radium remains as fascinating as the day it was found. In the early 20th century, there was another famous case involving radium and its detrimental effects on human health. One individual at the center of this case was Eben Byers, a wealthy American socialite and
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
People discussed in the book includes those such as scientist Marie Curie whose discovery of Radium,almost ruined her career, and the writer Mark Twain, whose short story Sold to Satan featured a devil who was made of radium and wore a suit made of . Also discussed is Maria Goeppert-Mayer, a German-born American who earned a Nobel Prize in Physics for her groundbreaking work, yet continually faced opposition due to her gender.
(Brown 166). This radioactive element that workers produce is not just affecting the environment, but is also affecting the workers and their families. Brown has given an immense amount of evidence to explain to the readers how it affected so many of the workers’ health; she gives a vivid picture of how the radioactivity and particles of plutonium linger in the air. The effects to the workers and their family range from cancerous cells to organ deterioration, when a pregnant woman is exposed to it, the health of her baby is also at risk. The fourth and last part of the book is “Dismantling the Plutonium Curtain,” this curtain is the curtain of secrecy.
Granted that Catherine “won her case six times, for the Radium Dial Company appealed six times. After losing all six, the company appealed one last to the United States Supreme Courrt and finally the Illinois Industrial Commission awarded Catherine five thousand, six hundred, and sixty-one dollars” (Scene 20, p. 65). This case probably shed a new light to the countless of workers who probably had been affected by the radium. Moreover, assuming that the company eventually went bankrupt, it is not a stretch to say that injustice transformed to justice. Even if only by some measurable degree; by some tick of
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)
... was overexposed to radioactivity never happened in real life. The film Fat Man and Little Boy showed great detail
Throughout the novel, Skloot recounts some of the great advancements in biomedical research. Media outlets often prematurely declared these great advancements as the solution to all disease. Similar to this case is the discovery of radium. In the 1800’s, radium was deemed to be “a substitute for gas, electricity, and a positive cure for every disease” (Skloot 46). Radium kills cancer cells, but it also kills healthy cells, as well. Notably, to treat Henrietta’s aggressive cervical cancer, doctors used radium, “[Henrietta] began burning inside, and...
“I belong to a Clan of One-Breasted Women. My mother, my grandmothers, and six aunts have all had mastectomies. Seven are dead. The two who survive have just completed rounds of chemotherapy and radiation” (Williams 275). This author uses real life situations from her life to create this short story. Her story reflects on what she thought had been a flash in the night her whole life until talking with her father. Indeed, it had not been a flash in the night and was instead a bomb during the Nuclear War testing. “On August 30, 1979, during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, a suit was filed entitled “Irene Allen vs. the United States of America.” Mrs. Allen was the first to be alphabetically listed with twenty-four test cases, representative of nearly 1200 plaintiffs seeking compensation from the United States government for cancers caused from nuclear testing in Nevada” (Williams 277). With cancer being so common in the Utah area where the Nuclear testing was done many people wondered if there was a connection. “It was the first time a federal court had determined that nuclear tests had been the cause of cancers” (Williams 278). Some plaintiffs had been awarded and the other cases of this matter were not proved that nuclear testing had resulted in cancer. This was a strong topic amongst the Utah community and the United States that is still up in the air to this very day. Terry cannot prove or disprove that all these people had developed cancer from the nuclear fallout, but it is
Most people would say that love is a concept which will always be a mystery to man, because it is so changeable, and therefore it will always be able to fool and distort man’s thoughts. Love can both be happy and miserable, and this makes it very powerful and therefore able to control the entire behaviour of a person. Throughout a lifetime people will unavoidably experience things that will have a certain impact on the individual’s personality as well as further development. These experiences will often become memories that will follow them their entire life. This is also the case in “Mule Killers”, where a father tells his son about the memories he has of the year his son was conceived and his relationship to his father.
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.
-Miners risked their lives when they were searching for uranium because they were exposed to radioactive waves which is a huge health concern
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.
What is love? Love is a strong affection out of personal ties. Those who misunderstand and misuse it will have terrible consequences, and those who know the true meaning of it will have benefit from it. The example of misunderstand it will happen when one person mixes s/he’s own feeling with love, something terrible. For examples: jealousy, manipulate one and others, mistrust and desire for power. In the Macbeth by William Shakespeare, love has taken into a lot of different forms some are bad and some are good. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth ‘s desire toward the crowned is one example of misunderstand of love. Lady Macbeth manipulates her husband to kill King Duncan is another example of misunderstanding of love. Later on Lady Macbeth is suffers from nightmare because she misuses the concept of love. Macbeth is suffering from his own problem which is the death prophecy. In the other hand, Maduff and his family is the one that are using the love in a positive way. The love protection from Lady Macduff to her son, from her son protects his father, from Macduff to protect his family. Even thought, Macbeth has order to kill Macduff family, Macduff is still survives the suffering, he uses this as his power to revenge for his family. Macduff become the victor in the end, which is the example of those who use it wisely can be either benefit from it or have good feedback.
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.
One of the greatest events of twentieth century was the use of radioisotope as a source of energy and as medical and industrial tools. Using radioactivity has been a global issue owing to its very nature. When it is used for peaceful purposes, it is a triumph of science because it can solve energy problems in the form of nuclear energy but the side effects in the form of harmful radiation and harmful radioactive waste is the real limitations of science. This essay will attempt to analyze the application of science in the use of radioactivity and radioactive isotopes and how science is not so effective in dealing with the side effects.