An historical report of radiation health effects to the Curies

[Chris Alston <alstonc@odrge.odr.georgetown.edu>]

>Serious health problems of Marie and Pierre Curie (an excerpt from a source
>on the Internet)
>
>        A week earlier Marie and Pierre had been invited to the Royal
>Institution in London where Pierre gave a lecture. Before the crowded
>auditorium he showed how radium rapidly affected photographic plates
>wrapped in paper, how the substance gave off heat; in the semi-darkness
>he demonstrated the spectacular light effect. He described the medical
>tests he had tried out on himself. He had wrapped a sample of radium
>salts in a thin rubber covering and bound it to his arm for ten hours,
>then had studied the wound, which resembled a burn, day by day. After 52
>days a permanent grey scar remained. In that connection Pierre mentioned
>the possibility of radium being able to be used in the treatment of
>cancer. But Pierre's scarred hands shook so that once he happened to
>spill a little of the costly preparation. Fifty years afterwards the
>presence of radioactivity was discovered on the premises and certain
>surfaces had to be cleaned.
>        In actual fact Pierre was ill. His legs shook so that at times he
>found
>it hard to stand upright. He was in much pain. He consulted a doctor who
>diagnosed neurasthenia and prescribed strychnine. And the skin on
>Marie's fingers was cracked and scarred. Both of them constantly
>suffered from fatigue. They evidently had no idea that the radiation
>could have a detrimental effect on their general state of health.
>Pierre, who liked to say that radium had a million times stronger
>radioactivity than uranium, often carried a sample in his waistcoat
>pocket to show his friends. Marie liked to have a little radium salt by
>her bed that shone in the darkness. The papers they left behind them
>give off pronounced radioactivity. If today at the Bibliothèque
>Nationale you want to consult the three black notebooks in which their
>work from December 1897 and the three following years is recorded, you
>have to sign a certificate that you do so at your own risk. People will
>have to do this for a long time to come. In fact it takes 1,620 years
>before the activity of radium is reduced to a half.
>        Rutherford was just as unsuspecting in regard to the hazards as
>were the
>Curies. When it turned out that one of his colleagues who had worked
>with radioactive substances for several months was able to discharge an
>electroscope by exhaling, Rutherford expressed his delight. This
>confirmed his theory of the existence of airborne emanations.
>In view of the potential for the use of radium in medicine, factories
>began to be built in the USA for its large-scale production. The
>question came up of whether or not Marie and Pierre should apply for a
>patent for the production process. They were both against doing so. Pure
>research should be carried out for its own sake and must not become
>mixed up with industry's profit motive. Researchers should be
>disinterested and make their findings available to everyone. Marie and
>Pierre were generous in supplying their fellow researchers, Rutherford
>included, with the preparations they had so laboriously produced. They
>furnished industry with descriptions of the production process. END OF
>EXCERPT
>
>If you wish to know the source on the Internet, please contact me directly.
>John
> (e-mail: jrcamero@facstaff.wisc.edu)
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