I’m glowing inside, for obvious reasons.
Which brings me to this. What’s not to like about the Periodic Table? It is completely filled with wonders of our physical Earth. The element I am thinking about this day is radium. Good old number 88. Of course, we know it was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898. That is the reason it came to me. Today is Marie Curie’s birthday. Yes, born November 7, 1867, in Poland.
She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize for her work — her work around radium. It was a prize in Physics in 1903, and again in 1911. I think we’ve all become somewhat familiar with her life. She was born at a time when it was very difficult to be Polish. But, she made her way from the depths of an impoverished culture, to becoming one of the most brilliant scientists in history.
But was she really all that brilliant? I mean, she was handling radium on a daily basis. And we all know what a bad idea that turned out to be.
Oh, I say this in jest, of course. Science is discovery, plain and simple. It explores, it reveals, and then it maps out the facts based on the gathered data. A process. So when Madame Curie was shooting baskets with radium in her office trashcan on her lunch break, she didn’t quite know all the facts yet.
It seems like a very cool element. And radium is.
There is an abundance of radium in the Earth’s crust. Give or take, it is about one part per trillion by weight. Those who can do the math on this say it is the 84th most abundant element in Earth’s crust. Who’s earth crust? Mostly it hails from the Democratic Republic of Congo and also from Canada. It is primarily extracted as a byproduct of uranium mining.
So, when you find uranium, you find radium. Zappata.
But truthfully, I am not sure why Marie and Pierre were so transfixed with their work in radium. Historically, it didn’t have that many earth-shattering uses.
Radium, these days, is barely used because it is so highly radioactive.
We see, sometimes, that radium-223 is used to treat cancer that has spread to the bones. Because bones contain calcium and radium is in the same group as calcium, it can be utilized to target cancerous bone cells. Radium gives off alpha particles that can kill the cancerous cells.
But it used to be used for lesser things. Novel things, if you will.
Between 1917 and 1926, during radium’s glory days, who wouldn’t want a glow-in-the-dark watch or clock. So those folks at the U.S. Radium Corporation employed more than a hundred workers — who were mostly women, I might add — to paint watch and clock faces, with their patented Undark luminous paint. All day long.
That Undark paint was comprised of glue, water, and radium powder. A catchy name, don’t you think. Undark? Anyway, this was tedious work, as you might imagine, and workers were taught to shape paintbrushes with their mouths to maintain a fine point. Some of those ladies even used the material to paint their nails and teeth.
The upper ranks of U.S. Radium encouraged those women to work with the dangerous mixture gladly. Yet, all of those men in management and all of those research scientists were well aware of the danger. They never went near the stuff.
As you can imagine, those women got sick. No records can be found of how many U.S. Radium’s employees suffered from “anemia, inexplicable bone fractures, bleeding gums and eventually, necrosis of the jaw.” A cover-up was in place. The cases of death by radiation sickness were initially attributed to syphilis. The higher-ups put this diagnosis in play to smear the girls’ reputations. They also hired all the medical investigators and paid them to withhold their findings.
Five of “The Radium Girls” sued the company. The case was settled in 1928. Despite the settlement, radium was still used in clocks until the 1960s. Tick tock.
And Marie Curie? She died on July 4, 1934, from aplastic anemia. It is believed to have been contracted from her long-term exposure to radiation. Her remains have been sealed in a lead lining because of the radioactivity.
But today, we all have a better reason to glow.
==========
“Don’t let anyone take away your inner glow.”
― Jyoti Patel
===========
“To shine your brightest light is to be who you truly are.”
― Roy T. Bennett
==========
“Choose to be radiant.”
— Natalie Haig
==========
You’re glowing. So was she, but in a different way.
