Radium on watch dials

[Wayne Schlitt <wayne@midwestcs.com>]

Hello!

I am a pocket watch collector who is looking for help in understanding 
the risks of radium on watch dials.


As I'm sure many of you know, back in the 1920's, there was a big
business in painting watch and alarm clock dials with a luminous
compound made with radium.  The fate of the women and girls who were
hired to paint these dials wasn't pretty as many of them ended up
ingesting a great deal of radium and suffered anywhere from mild
sickness to death.

While the so called "Radium Girls" is an interesting and well
documented subject, that really isn't what I'm hoping to learn about.
Those dials that they painted didn't evaporate into the ether when
they left the factory.  It is those dials today that I'm interested in 
learning about.

While I'm sure that most have ended up in landfills, many are radium
dials are now accumulating in the hoards of watch collectors and are
being handled on a regular basis by people who repair watches and
clocks.  As you might guess, these people have a strong emotional and
financial bias in believing these dials are perfectly harmless.  As a
result, I am very skeptical of information that I hear from them.


I have written up a web page with what I know on the subject at:

http://www.midwestcs.com/elgin/help/luminous_dials.html

As this web page is currently being read by maybe a half dozen people
a day, I would really appreciate any comments that you may have.