Radium is radioactive and kills your cells. Read the horror story from the early 1900s.

Nancy janssens
Sep 12
10 min read

Grace died in 1933 at the age of 34. The radium bored holes into her body while she was still alive, eating away bone and skin.

What topics do we discuss?

-Foreword

What is radium? Who researched radium?

-How did radium damage come to light?

-Lawsuit against the Radium Corp. factory

-A timeline of radium from 1898-1935

-Radium was used for cancer treatment

-Radium treatment propaganda articles

-How did radium become a craze?

-What kind of things did she put radium in?

Victims of radium

-Photos Products Radium

-Links to websites

Foreword

The harm caused by radium is still closely guarded online. If you simply Google it, you won't find much information about its effects. You'll mainly find information on independent American websites.

Propaganda is effective. According to articles found on Google, radium isn't harmful. When you dig deeper, you'll find the truth about radium's serious harm. You should absolutely avoid radium, and it certainly shouldn't touch your skin.

What is radium? Who researched radium?

Radium is a radioactive substance . There is some debate about who first discovered radium:

-Dr . Sabin von Sochocky (1883-1928 --> 45 years)

-Dr. Henri Becquerel (1852-1908 -->56 years)

In any case, they both died young from radium poisoning.

It was around 1896 that Henri Becquerel discovered radium as a new element: Ra.

Marie Curie (1867-1934) and her husband Pierre Currie (1859-1906) jointly with Becquerel won the Nobel Prize in 1903 for their work on radium and radioactivity.

The harmful effects of exposure to radioactivity were well understood by scientists. They risked their lives working with radium.

In a 1903 interview, Pierre Curie describes the dangers of radium by saying:

He doesn't want to trust himself in a room with a kilo of pure radium. It would undoubtedly burn my eyesight. It would also burn the skin on my body and probably kill me.

They tested the skin of several people. Pierre Currie also tested his own arm. It immediately became infected. His wound was very painful, and for a while, he couldn't dress properly.

He concluded that radium causes strong inflammatory reactions on the skin. The skin falls off after a while, and painful burns take a long time to heal. In the article below, you can read various studies showing that radium is a significant pro-inflammatory.

See article about Pierre Currie's research on radium.

Pierre Curie died in 1906 in a street accident involving a horse-drawn carriage. He was 47.

Marie Curie died in 1934 from radiation-related illnesses. She was 67.

It's said her laboratory notebooks are too contaminated to be processed safely. Even today, they are stored in lead boxes.

In 1906 , Dr. Sabin von Sochocky (a scientist) studied the Curies' work in Paris. He wanted to know everything about radium. Back in the United States in 1913, he developed a luminous radium paint and was soon hired by US Radium to run their factory. In 1917, a factory was established where they manufactured products containing radium.

In 1917, Dr. Sabin von Sochocky was already contaminated with radioactivity in his electroscope laboratory at the factory. He died in 1928 at the age of 45. His co-worker, Edward Lehman (chemist), died a little earlier, around 1925. Both suffered burns on their hands and arms.

Do you remember the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986? It was the worst nuclear disaster ever. The accident occurred near the Ukrainian cities of Chernobyl and Pripyat, near the border with Belarus. Reactor 4 of the nuclear power plant exploded in the accident.

A large amount of radioactive particles was released. So much radioactivity that the area was declared uninhabitable. People developed cancer and became ill en masse.

How did Radium damage come to light?

The first cases appeared around 1920, and initially, doctors were baffled. Healthy young women suddenly became ill and developed a number of ailments, including anemia , skin problems, tooth loss, and cancer . But the most disturbing symptom for these working-class women was jaw necrosis : their faces were literally rotting away. Holes appeared in their skin and bone.

What did these young women have in common besides their symptoms? They were all factory workers. They all worked in radium dial factories in New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut.

The women who became ill were radium dial painters. They painted dials, clocks, and instruments for ships and airplanes with glow-in-the-dark paint . They would eventually discover that they were becoming ill from radium poisoning caused by the paint, which was slowly killing them. Later, as lawsuits against their employers mounted, the press dubbed the women the Radium Girls.

From 1921 onward, countless dial painters in the House of Orange began complaining of strange ailments. Their teeth would hurt and eventually fall out. The tooth cavity wouldn't heal, and abscesses formed. They developed severe anemia. Their bones became brittle. Eventually, jaw necrosis set in; their bone and tissue cells would die. Unbeknownst to them, they were suffering from the effects of radiation poisoning.

The first death was reported in 1922. Amelia Maggia had worked as a dial painter for four years between 1917 and 1921. She was only 25 when she died. In the days leading up to her death, her dentist was able to lift and remove her entire lower jaw by hand.

The second and third deaths were Helen Quinlan (aged 21) and Irene Rudolph (aged 22) . This happened the following year. They had worked as clock painters for twenty months and two and a half years, respectively.

In 1924, the young dial painters and their doctors began to suspect that their mysterious illnesses had occupational origins. They informed the health and labor departments of their concerns, but despite three government investigations, no action was taken. They turned to the Consumers League, a reform group representing female workers, which tried to advocate for the dial painters, but this too was ignored.

MEDICAL EVIDENCE

By the mid-1920s, mounting medical evidence linked radium to jaw necrosis. A paper by physicians Harrison Martland and Joseph Knef revealed high levels of radioactivity in examinations of living dial painters and after the autopsy of a deceased dial painter, Sarah Carlough Maileffer. This groundbreaking work explicitly linked dial painting to radium poisoning.

The radium ingested by the dial painters by licking the brush penetrated their bones and accumulated over time, becoming a source of ionizing radiation within the body. This internal radiation source gradually killed healthy cells and ultimately destroyed their bone marrow and blood cells, culminating in the horrific symptoms the dial painters experienced.

The women, known as the Radium Girls, painted luminous numbers on watches, clocks, and instrument dials using radioactive radium paint. They were told to lick the brush, thus poisoning them with radium.

Lawsuit against the Radium Corp. factory

James Stemm, curator of the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History, says via email: By the late 1920s, many female dial painters had become seriously ill, and several had died.

Although Radium Corp. assured dial painters they were safe, Stemm says, the company knew working with radium was dangerous. "A report commissioned by the USRC in the early 1920s concluded that the complete lack of safety precautions endangered dial painters," he says.

Radium Corp. submitted a falsified version of the report to New Jersey officials and suppressed its findings, continuing to refute the idea that the radium dial paint did not make anyone sick.

"When one of the USRC's senior chemists died of aplastic anemia in 1925, it became clear there was a connection," says Stemm. "Studies by officials in New Jersey showed that the women suffered from radiation poisoning, and that this came from the radium they were exposed to at their workplace."

In the late 1920s, five women sued the USRC in Orange, New Jersey, starting with Grace Fryer. It took Fryer two years to find a lawyer to handle the case, but once she did, four other women joined in – Edna Hussman, Katherine Schaub, and sisters Quinta McDonald and Albina Larice. Newspaper headlines called them the Living Dead and the Radium Girls .

Their lawyer, Raymond Berry, hired the 30-year-old physicist Elizabeth Hughes, who used an electroscope to measure the radioactivity in the breath of the five dial painters. Hughes testified that all five women had ingested so much radium that their breath was no longer clean.

At the start of the trial in 1928, all five women were too ill to raise their hands to take the oath. Two women were bedridden, and another could not sit upright without a back brace.

Fearing they wouldn't survive a lengthy legal battle, the women and their lawyers decided to settle the case out of court in June 1928. Each Radium Girl received $10,000 in damages and $600 a year for the rest of their lives. All their legal and medical bills were to be paid by the company. The catch was that Radium wouldn't have to take any legal responsibility in the United States.

The first inventor of radium, Dr. Sabin A. Von Sochocky, also died of radium poisoning. This information helped in the trial. See article

A black and white photo of the five Radium Girls, initially still relatively fit.

Hughes' testimony received worldwide attention. To avoid the negative publicity, Radium Corp. agreed to an out-of-court settlement.

"[It was] one of the first cases in the United States where employers were held liable for the health and safety of their workers," says Stemm. The legacy of the radium girls, he says, is "the creation of workplace safety regulations and oversight agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration."

By 1927, more than 50 women had died from radium paint poisoning. The five radium girls who initiated the lawsuit also ultimately died young. But the story of the Radium Girls doesn't end there. Their story also saved lives. Their illnesses and suffering raised public awareness of the dangers of radium.

"By 1935, radium's use in most consumer products had ended and was prohibited by government regulations," says Stemm. Radium continued to be used in aircraft instruments until the 1970s—with far more safety precautions—but today it has been replaced by technology that is far less lethal.

A Timeline of Radium

The brown color are people who died from radium poisoning.

-1896: Discovery of radium (perhaps a little earlier)

-1901: The first cancer therapies using radium were launched. Within a 20-year period

radium as a cancer therapy was in full bloom.

-1906: Dr. Sabin von Sochocky studied Currie's work on radium and radioactivity in Paris.

-1908: Dr. Henri Becquerel (physicist) died at the age of 56 from radium poisoning. He had

Severe burns on his body, similar to radium damage. He conducted extensive research on radium.

They are being vague about his cause of death.

-1911: Founding of the pharmaceutical industry by John D. Rockefeller.

-1913: Dr. Sabin von Sochocky developed a luminous radium paint

-1917: Establishment of a factory that made products with radium, such as radium paint

-1920: The first illnesses and disclosure of radium poisoning were around 1920

-1925: Edward Lehman had died and also suffered severe burns on his hands and arms (He was

chemist and co-worker of Dr. Sabin von Sochocky)

-1927: More than fifty women had died from radium poisoning

-1928: Dr. Sabin von Sochocky died at the age of 45 from radium poisoning (scientist)

- 1932: Mr. Eben M. Byers (Healthy Sportsman) drank radium water for a long time. His jaw dropped.

literally and died in 1932

-1933: Grace (factory worker) died at age 34 from radium poisoning

-1934: Marie Curie died of radium poisoning (scientist)

-1935: Radium use and sale were banned

As you can see, scientists and chemists were also dying from radium poisoning. From 1920 onward, the injuries and death tolls began to mount. It was so extreme that it couldn't be kept secret. There are many more injuries and deaths, but we can't list them all.

Read original newspaper article. See website newspaper article

Dates: Danville, Virginia · Tuesday, May 29, 1928

Radium was used for cancer treatment

Since 1903 and even before, it was known that radium caused inflammatory reactions, burns, skin flaking, and very slow healing. The pain persists for a long time. Every chronic disease is an inflammatory reaction, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, autoimmune diseases, etc.

Yet, a few years later they were giving radium as cancer therapy.

So cancer patients who already have an inflammatory reaction are given a treatment (radium) that promotes inflammation. Radium is carcinogenic, and they give it to cancer patients?

Some chemists discovered that the radiation emitted by radium could kill living cells, and doctors began using it to treat cancer in the early 1900s. It's simply insane.

If all your cells die, you kill all your organs and systems. How can you survive then? Without an immune system, you can't recover. It's like going to war without soldiers. A body without cells means death.

Now they've replaced radium with chemo. Chemo is carcinogenic. Everyone knows chemo is carcinogenic. It contains mustard gas, which Hitler used to poison his enemies.

The pharmaceutical industry was founded by John D. Rockefeller in 1911. He hijacked medicine. Read the history and origins of the pharmaceutical industry. It's crucial to understand how they deliberately make people sick.

Read blog history pharmaceutical industry

Radium treatment propaganda articles

Check out the radium propaganda articles from the early 1900s. While people were falling victim to radium poisoning around that time, they continued to advertise radium products and treatments.

“Radium to Extend Life to 100 Years,” The New York Herald, October 14, 1921, p. 1.

From the Buffalo Times, Jan. 1, 1922, p. 52.

How did radium become a craze?

Through propaganda, many people thought that if the radioactivity in radium could "cure" cancer, then it must be good for you in general.

Both legitimate doctors and fraudsters seized the idea and ran with it." Through propaganda and extensive advertising, it became a huge money-making business. No one knew that radium was very harmful and caused cancer. Radium became a huge craze. They put radium in countless products.

What kind of things did she put radium in?

It was promoted as a remedy for "just about every conceivable illness, condition, or medical condition." For example, medicine bottles for rheumatism containing radium.

-Companies sold devices that released radium radiation into drinking water.

-Radium also appeared in products such as cleaning products, disinfectants, cosmetics, soaps, toothpaste, gray hair, foot warmers, sunscreen, lip balm, bath salts, stove (furnace) cleaners, insect killers, products that make plants grow faster

-In food such as: chocolate, butter

-The fluorescent yellow or green in clocks is radium (radioactive)

-Cigarettes with radium

-Leaves (flours) with radium

-Glassware that you place your food on, such as dessert cups or ice cream cups

-Glassware as a souvenir in your living room

Companies simply added the word radium to their products as a marketing tool, even if no radium was used."

See photos of radium-containing products from the early 1900s at the bottom of this blog post.

Victims of radium

Mr. Eben M. Byers (1880–1932) drank water laced with radium (radioactive water) for a long time. His jaw fell off completely and he subsequently died. He was a healthy athlete. All the photos show the same man.

Katherine Schaub (left) and Grace Fryer (right) were two of the women who filed suit against the United States Radium Corporation in 1927. Both women died young in 1933.