Radium

Alkaline earth metal, white but tarnishes black upon exposure to air, luminesces, decomposes in water, emits radioactive radon gas, disintegrated radioactively until it reaches stable lead, radiological hazard, α, β, and γ emitter, exposure to radium can cause cancer and other body disorders. Radium is over a million times more radioactive than the same mass of uranium.

Uses of Radium:

Radium was formerly used in self-luminous paints for watches, nuclear panels, aircraft switches, clocks, and instrument dials. In the mid-1920s, a lawsuit was filed against the United States Radium Corporation by five dying "Radium Girl" dial painters who had painted radium-based luminous paint on the dials of watches and clocks. The dial painters routinely licked their brushes to give them a fine point, thereby ingesting radium. Their exposure to radium caused serious health effects which included sores, anemia, and bone cancer. This is because radium is treated as calcium by the body, and deposited in the bones, where radioactivity degrades marrow and can mutate bone cells.

Radium was once an additive in products such as toothpaste, hair creams, and even food items due to its supposed curative powers. Such products soon fell out of vogue and were prohibited by authorities in many countries after it was discovered they could have serious adverse health effects.

Radium (usually in the form of radium chloride) was used in medicine to produce radon gas which in turn was used as a cancer treatment; for example, several of these radon sources were used in Canada in the 1920s and 1930s. The isotope 223Ra (under the trade name Xofigo) was approved by the FDA in 2013 for use in medicine as a cancer treatment of bone metastasis.

Hazard symbols to note:

 Radioactive and Biohazard sign

Radiation danger and Toxic sign

The hazard symbol for carcinogenic chemicals. A carcinogen is any substance, radionuclide, or radiation that is an agent directly involved in causing cancer.

Follow Aghnia Mardiyah's board Radium advertising on Pinterest.

This kind of vintage aesthetic for brief?