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to increase luminescence]] Radium dials are watch, clock and other instrument dials painted with luminous paint containing radium-226 to produce radioluminescence. Radium dials were produced throughout most of the 20th century before being replaced by safer tritium-based luminous material in the 1970s and finally by non-toxic, non-radioactive strontium aluminate–based photoluminescent material from the middle 1990s. The gruesome and often fatal radium jaw injuries suffered by early Radium Girls in the United States became a cause célèbre for occupational safety and labor law in the opening decades of the 20th century.
In 1914, Dr. Sabin Arnold von Sochocky and Dr. George S. Willis founded the Radium Luminous Material Corporation. The company made luminescent paint. The company later changed its name to the United States Radium Corporation.The use of radium to provide luminescence for hands and indices on watches soon followed.
The Ingersoll Watch division of the Waterbury Clock Company, a nationally-known maker of low-cost pocket and wristwatches, was a leading popularizer of the use of radium for watch hands and indices through the introduction of their "Radiolite" watches in 1916. "Which of These Two Are You?" (ad) New York Tribune, May 24, 1916, p. 6. The Radiolite series, made in various sizes and models, became a signature of the Connecticut-based company.
Radium dials were typically painted by young women, who used to 'point' their brushes by licking and shaping the bristles prior to painting the fine lines and numbers on the dials. This practice resulted in the ingestion of radium, which caused serious jaw-bone degeneration and malignancy and other dental diseases. The disease, Radium jaw, was recognized as an occupational disease in 1925 after a group of radium painters, known as the Radium Girls, from the United States Radium Corporation sued. By 1930, all dial painters stopped pointing their brushes by mouth. Stopping this practice drastically reduced the amount of radium ingested and therefore, the incidence of malignancy.
Luminous Processes employees interviewed by a journalist in 1978 stated they had been left ignorant of radium's dangers. They were told that eliminating lip-pointing had ended earlier problems. They worked in unvented rooms, they wore smocks that they laundered at home. could pick up readings from pants returned from a dry cleaner and from clothes stored away in a cedar chest."Claudia Clark, The Radium Girls. ()
According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, "radioactive antiques including are usually not a health risk as long as they are intact and in good condition." They insist that watches with radium dials should not be taken apart without proper training, technique, and facilities, as radium paint can be ingested by inhaling flaking paint particles. Although old radium dials generally no longer produce light, this is due to the breakdown of the crystal structure of the luminous zinc sulfide rather than the radioactive decay of the radium. The radium isotope (226Ra) used has a half-life of about 1,600 years. "Radionuclide Basics: Radium," United States Environmental Protection Agency, www.epa.gov, accessed June 6, 2022.
Chronic exposure to high levels of radium can result in an increased incidence of bone cancer, liver cancer, or breast cancer as shown by studies of the Radium Girls. Decaying radium also produces the gas radon, recognized as the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States and the United Kingdom.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> "WWII Military Watches 'Potentially Pose Serious Cancer Risk,' Faculty of Arts, Science, and Technology, University of Northampton, www.northampton.ac.uk/ June 14, 2018. A 2018 study by researchers from the University of Northampton found that a collection of 30 vintage military watches with radium dials kept in a small, unventilated room produced a radon concentration 134 times greater than the UK's recommended "safe" level.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> "Radium," United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, www.nrc.gov/, June 19, 2021. Prior to that date, "the federal government had a limited role, if any, in ensuring the safe use of radium," according to the NRC. The element was phased out of use by industry acting under its own volition as superior and safer luminous materials entered the marketplace.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> "Lume 101: Watch Luminescence Explained," Precisionwatches.com, captured June 6, 2022.
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