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Radium paint was widely used for 40 years on the faces of watches, compasses, and aircraft instruments, so they could be read in the dark. Radium is a radiological hazard , emitting gamma rays that can penetrate a glass watch dial and into human tissue.
In Bloomsburg, it continued to produce items with luminescent paint using radium, strontium-90 and cesium-137 such as watch dials, instrument gauge faces, deck markers, and paint. [8] It ceased radium processing altogether in 1968, spinning off those operations as Nuclear Radiation Development Corporation, LLC, based in Grand Island, New York.
The people working in the industry who applied the radioactive paint became known as the Radium Girls because many of them became ill and some died from exposure to the radiation emitted by the radium contained within the product. The product was the direct cause of radium jaw in the dial painters. Undark was also available as a kit for general ...
In 1917, glow-in-the-dark watches were all the rage. But the girls who painted them with radioactive paint weren’t told how dangerous it was.
November 1917 ad for an Ingersoll "Radiolite" watch, one of the first watches mass marketed in the USA featuring a radium-illuminated dial. Radium was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898 [1] and was soon combined with paint to make luminescent paint, which was applied to clocks, airplane instruments, and the like, to be able to read them in the dark.
"Radium Girls' is a "ghost play" that tells of memories of what happened 100 years ago to young women painting radium dials, director says. Stages Bloomington 'Radium Girls' tackles radium ...
Tritium is not the only material that can be used for self-powered lighting. Radium was used to make self-luminous paint from the early 20th century to about 1970. Promethium briefly replaced radium as a radiation source. Tritium is the only radiation source used in radioluminescent light sources today due to its low radiological toxicity and ...
The luminous paint used on the dials contained a mixture of zinc sulfide activated with silver, and powdered radium, a product that the Radium Dial Company named Luma. However, unlike the US Radium Corporation, Radium Dial Company was specifically set up to only paint dials, and no other radium processing took place at the premises.