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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 ...
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 ...
The workers had been told that the paint was harmless. [1] During World War I and World War II, the company produced luminous watches and gauges for the United States Army for use by soldiers. [2] U.S. Radium workers, especially women who painted the dials of watches and other instruments with luminous paint, suffered serious radioactive ...
Nemoto & Co., Ltd. – a global manufacturer of phosphorescent pigments and other specialized phosphors – was founded by Kenzo Nemoto in December 1941 as a luminous paint processing company and has supplied and developed luminous paint to the watch and clock and aviation instruments industry since.
Glow-in-the-dark watches were all the rage, and clock manufacturers used a luminous paint made with radium to get their clocks to glow. Female workers would painstakingly paint the numbers onto ...
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.
The first use of radioluminescence was in luminous paint containing radium, a natural radioisotope. Beginning in 1908, luminous paint containing a mixture of radium and copper - doped zinc sulfide was used to paint watch faces and instrument dials, giving a greenish glow.