the.com/radium
the element that glowed so prettily it killed its biggest fans
means A highly radioactive metallic element, once prized for its luminous glow before its deadly effects were understood.
from From Latin 'radius,' meaning 'ray' or 'spoke of a wheel' — the same root behind 'radio' and 'radiance' — chosen by Marie and Pierre Curie, who isolated the element, for the rays it emits. The '-ium' suffix is the standard tail for metallic elements, as in sodium and uranium.
- discovered by
- Marie Curie, who later died from the exposure
- glow factory
- painted onto watch dials for nighttime visibility
- radium girls
- workers licked brushes, then their jaws decayed
- quack cure
- sold in tonics and toothpaste as health booster
- half-life
- about 1,600 years of relentless decay
marie curie's laboratory — polish-born physicist isolated radium in 1898 in paris, died from radium poisoning in 1934
radium girls — factory workers in new jersey painted watch dials with radium paint 1917-1926, developed fatal cancers
radon gas seepage — radium-226 decays into radon, the second leading cause of lung cancer in us homes today