The Destruction Of Radium Girls In The 1920's

Radium Girls was a chemical disaster that happened during the 1920’s. Women in watch making were being exposed to Radium all the time. These women worked painting wristwatches, and in order to get a fine point on their paintbrush they licked the brush, therefore swallowing the paint. Some of them also painted their teeth and nails with this paint since they were told that it wasn’t harmful. The paint had Radium in it, therefore exposing them to Radium. They painted the numbers on the watches. They used radium in the paint because when it is mixed with zinc sulphide it glows (Boettcher, 2006). This shows the original use of the chemical, they wanted a watch that glowed in the dark, so they could see the time in the middle of the night. Soldiers
Radium is an element that has a half-life of 1,600 years, which means that after one hundred years there is still ninety-six percent of the Radium left (Boettcher, 2006). So today the watches that were created in the 1920’s using this radium paint still have more than ninety-six percent of the original amount of radium in them. This means that those watches could still be potentially dangerous if some of that radium was ingested. This shows that the persistence of radium is very high because a large amount of it is still in the environment after a very long time. Also, this is an environmental hazard because since it stays in the environment for so long, if somehow the radium paint was ingested it could have an affect on people still today. Radium is dangerous because it emits alpha particles, beta particles, and gamma rays. Alpha particles are not harmful if they are outside the body because they cannot get though skin (Quigley, 2002). Since these women swallowed the radium however the alpha particles are inside their body, therefore the alpha particles as Ann Quigley said (2002), “release all their energy inside the body, especially affecting blood, the liver and spleen” (para. 20). Also, as David Boettcher states (2006), “if flakes of radium paint are inhaled they can sit in the lungs, where the alpha radiation can hit the delicate (much more delicate than skin) internal tissue of the lungs and cause tumors” (Radium Luminous Paint section, para. 4). As it shows through the past quotes, since the alpha radiation is inside the body it is trapped inside the body, if it can’t get through skin cells in the first place, it can’t get out from skin cells either. But inside the body there are tissues that alpha radiation can get through, and then these cells build up and become a tumor, which likely makes radium a carcinogen, because it causes tumors, which usually are a sign of cancer.