Radium Girls
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The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting radium dials – watch dials and hands with self-luminous paint. The incidents occurred at three factories i
Radium painters working in a factory
The former factory site in West Orange, New Jersey
Radium dial
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Radium dials are watch, clock and other instrument dials painted with luminous paint containing radium-226 to produce radioluminescence. Radium dials were produced throughout most of the 20th century
Radium Girls
…The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting radium dials – watch dials and hands with self-luminous paint. The incidents occurred at three factories in the United States: one in Orange, New Jersey, beginning…
A 1950s radium clock, exposed to ultraviolet light to increase luminescence
November 1917 ad for an Ingersoll "Radiolite" watch, one of the first watches mass marketed in the USA featuring a radium-illuminated dial.
Wristwatch produced for the US Army during World War II showing characteristic sandy deterioration of radium–zinc sulfide painted hands and numbers. Such a watch should not be opened due to the danger of inhalation of airborne particles.
Three radium dials and a radon detector are placed in a sealed plastic container. After 6 hours, the radon level was 446 pCi/L.