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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 ...
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 ...
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.
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 Girls' is a "ghost play" that tells of memories of what happened 100 years ago to young women painting radium dials, director says.
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 commercial availability. [3]
In the mid-1920s, a lawsuit was filed against the United States Radium Corporation by five dying "Radium Girls" – dial painters who had painted radium-based luminous paint on the components of watches and clocks. [45] The dial painters were instructed to lick their brushes to give them a fine point, thereby ingesting radium. [46]
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