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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 ( 226 Ra ) used has a half-life of about 1,600 years, [ 6 ] so radium dials remain essentially just as radioactive as when originally ...
A typical older radium wristwatch dial has a radioactivity of 3–10 kBq and could expose its wearer to an annual dose of 24 millisieverts if worn continuously. [1] Another health hazard is its decay product, the radioactive gas radon , which constitutes a significant risk even at extremely low concentrations when inhaled.
The resulting dials are now collectively known as radium dials. 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 ...
At the time, the dangers of radiation were not well understood. Around 1920, a similar radium dial business, known as the Radium Dial Company, a division of the Standard Chemical Company, opened in Chicago. It soon moved its dial painting operation to Ottawa, Illinois to be closer to its major customer, the Westclox Clock Company. Several ...
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. During the 1920s and 1930s, the harmful effects of this paint became increasingly clear.
The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting radium dials – watch dials and hands with self-luminous paint. The incidents occurred at three factories in the United States: one in Orange, New Jersey , beginning around 1917; one in Ottawa, Illinois , beginning in the early 1920s; and one in ...
Youth Services International confronted a potentially expensive situation. It was early 2004, only three months into the private prison company’s $9.5 million contract to run Thompson Academy, a juvenile prison in Florida, and already the facility had become a scene of documented violence and neglect.
A watch with "gaseous tritium light sources" applied on its dial markers and hands and afterglow pigments applied on its bezel ring. By the late 1960s, radium was phased out and replaced with safer alternatives. [9] Tritium was used on and the original Panerai Luminor dive watch Radiomir and almost all Swiss watches from 1960 to 1998 when it ...