radium dial painters

[Bruce Busby <bbusby@umich.edu>]

one last try... Hope it is not just me that isn't getting this...


 From Environmental Radioactivity from Natural, Industrial and Military
 Sources. Merril Eisenbud. Academic  Press, Inc. ~3rd edition, chapter 3

 Quote:

 "During and immediately following World War I, the use of
 radium in luminous paints was attended by hazards arising out of
 ignorance of the effects of this radioelement when inhaled or ingested
 (Martland, 1951; Evans et al., 1969).  Among a total population of about
 3000 luminous dial workers in the United States, a total of 63 cases of
 bone cancer are known to have occurred (Rowland et al.,1983).  These
 workers, mostly women, ingested radium because of the practice of using
 the lips to point the paint brushes (NAS-NRC,1990). The dial-painting
 cases have been studied thoroughly by a number of investigators, but the
 main credit belongs to Evans for having worked out the basic biophysical
 principles of radium injury in sufficient detail so that safe practices
 could be adopted. These practices proved effective not only for
 protection against radium but also against many of the hazards that 
 developed later in the atomic energy industry, where the information
 gained with radium was utilized to great advantage. In the first 40 years
 of this century only about 1 kg of radium was extracted from the earth's
 crust and at least 100 people died from various misuses of this material.
 In contrast,since 1942 the atomic energy programs have produced the
 radioactive equivalent of many tons of radium, and have done so with an
 excellent record of safety, except in the mining of uranium."
 
 End quote