![]() The luminous paint, which worked by converting the radiation into light through a fluorescent chemical, was one of the most successful radium-based products. How soon they develop depends upon the dose, but at the very high doses that the Radium Girls were exposed to, just a few years.” So the major health risk of ingesting radium is radiation-induced bone necrosis and bone cancers. “Since the body uses calcium to make bone, ingested radium is mistaken for calcium and gets incorporated into bone. ![]() When ingested, radium is particularly dangerous: “Chemically, it behaves very much like calcium,” said Jorgensen. The headline of a Wall Street Journal story about his death reads, “The radium water worked fine until his jaw came off.” One user, American socialite and athlete Eben Byers, became notorious for drinking a bottle of Radithor every day for years – and then dying from it in 1932. “Radium products were used for any ailment where lack of energy was seen to be the root cause – from common fatigue to impotence,” Jorgensen said in an email.įar from being a panacea, radium was deadly. ![]() And they didn’t see how adding some energy to their bodies could possibly be harmful, said Timothy Jorgensen, a radiation expert at Georgetown University and author of “ Strange Glow: The Story of Radiation.” “People knew that radioactivity released energy. ![]()
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