Nowadays, everyone knows the dangers of radiation and what radiation sickness is. Thanks to games such as stalker and fallout, even children know that if the Geiger counter starts to crackle, then they urgently need to get out of this area. And despite the fact that peaceful and sometimes not so atoms are walking across the planet, it is quite difficult to get radiation sickness. But it was not always the case.
It all started more than 100 years ago, when the Curies discovered thorium, polonium and radium to the world. After some time, it turned out that these elements emit radiation, which treated neoplasms, including malignant ones.
Even then there were suspicions that radiation was not so safe, but cunning corporate owners wanted profit and began to produce goods with the addition of radioactive substances, attributing miraculous properties to them.
Water with radon and ‘good sleep’ pillow covers
Back in 1903, when Joseph Thompson discovered radioactivity in ordinary well water, he began to examine samples of water and mud taken from famous resorts and healing springs around the world. And it turned out that almost all of them emit in varying quantities.
Of course, the healing properties of the waters were immediately attributed to radiation, deciding that it was its emanations that made the water alive.
There was one problem that prevented the commercial use of the discovery: radiation evaporated quite quickly from bottled mineral water. “It doesn’t matter,” the fellow scientists and cunning businessmen decided, “we will saturate it artificially.” And they got down to business.
Each bottle contained 2 micrograms of radium-226, which continuously disintegrated, saturating the water with “healing” radon. Doctors recommended drinking one after meals.
While some were simply exploiting the fashion for radiation, other cunning businessmen were poisoning the people with the isotope for real. For example, in wonderful medical institutions, emanatoriums, where the water was artificially saturated with radium salts.
Here is a wonderful document from the era:
“To use radioactive water for 6 patients daily, you need to spend about $50 for the device and about $150 for radioactive salts. The emanator consists of a metal or glass cylinder with a capacity of 1-2 liters. A candle (a rod of pure radioactive salts) is suspended in the cylinder filled with water “) After a day, the water will be impregnated with the amount of emanation necessary for the use of 1 patient (1000 Mache units). The water released through the siphon tap must be drunk immediately, because the effect of the emanation quickly ceases.”
1 unit of mache is approximately 3.64×10^(−10) curie/l and the emanator looked something like this:
The picture shows a device produced by the German company Erko for home use in 1936.
But “Revigator” is a magic jug that turns ordinary drinking water into radioactive one. The advertisement read:
“Drink when you’re thirsty – and when you’re not, morning and evening, six or more glasses a day!”
Unlike complex and expensive emanators, in which water was passed through a multi-stage filter system, here the walls of the vessel were covered with carnotite, that is, radioactive uranium vanadium ore.
By the way, the American Medical Association (AMA) accused the manufacturers of Revigator of deceiving consumers. It turns out that the vessel generated less than 2 microcuries per liter of water per day and for this reason could not be recognized as a real radioactive agent.
What about the radioactive Cosmos lining with monazite, the mineral from which thorium is extracted? It was suggested to place it under a pillow or in a mattress to improve sleep.
It was produced until 1955, when the American Food and Drug Administration finally opened a case against the Cosmos company; painfully unpleasant health complaints were received from buyers.
Doramad toothpaste, for the shine of your teeth, radioactive style
Doramad Radioactive Zahncreme is a brand of toothpaste produced from 1920 to the forties in Germany. The main difference between this paste and many others is the thorium content. Manufacturers promised an antibacterial effect, as well as strengthening gums due to radiation, but in the end people simply lost their teeth.
Radium chocolate and sperm boosters
There are (or were) many out there which also ate chocolate with radium.
They also took it in tablets and drops. Perhaps, the magnificently designed “Radioendocrinator” device should be unconditionally recognized as a true pearl of radioactive medicine. Here it is:
Such a gadget was very expensive, 150 pre-war dollars, and was intended to increase the activity of sperm and treat diseases of the endocrine gland. The method of use was simple and unpretentious: take it out of the gold-embroidered case and carry it in your trouser pocket, close to your manhood.
It would be safer to carry a rattlesnake there, because, according to an employee of the Oak Ridge University Association’s Museum of Atomic Curiosities, this pocket Chernobyl is still so phony that he had to remove the radium-soaked paper from the device before photographing it for the website.
Cosmetics with magic radionuclides to restore youth
Every girl wants to shine, and in the 50-60s of the last century, the Tho-radia company helped French women with this. Despite the fact that the dangers of radiation thanks to Hiroshima and many other tests were known to everyone, this brand decided that adding radium to cosmetics was a great marketing move.
The Tho-Radia face cream contained 0.5 grams of thorium chloride and 0.25 radium bromide for every 100 grams of product. Radioactive cosmetics were considered elite and were expensive, since thorium and radium were also very expensive substances.
But Dr. Curie promised the customers that, from the beneficial effects of radiation, their faces would truly shine with tenderness and whiteness, and at the same time, pimples would disappear, wrinkles would smooth out: in a word, everything was the same as what advertising for expensive cosmetics promises today.
Strangely enough, it worked, the cosmetics of this manufacturer became very popular, but needless to say that it coped with old age not due to the rejuvenating effect. Beauty truly comes at a cost.
Cleanser for sparkling clean dishes
But in 1910, in New York, they decided to help housewives with the help of radiation, and they released a dishwashing liquid with the addition of radium. The manufacturer promised that this product will cope with everything from grease to rust, and will also make your hands soft and tender. But in the end, this remedy mainly dissolved the health of housewives.
The pill for all diseases
So one American pharmaceutical company advertised its suppositories, the main medicinal component of which was radium. The manufacturer promised good men’s health, treatment of hemorrhoids, constipation, as well as equalizing blood pressure and strengthening the heart. As a result, the happy consumer received cancer and a dead body.
“Radium Girls” and the death of Eben Byers
Back in 1926, a scandal involving the case of the “radium girls” broke out in the United States. The fact is that, in addition to patented medical products, cosmetics and other emanators, radioactive substances in those days were also actively used in purely household things, for example, for tinting glass and glazing porcelain or in car candles. Including radium, thorium and uranium, dials and clock hands were tinted so that they glowed in the dark. In the USA, similar products were produced by US Radium Corporation.
In the early 20s, female employees involved in the production of the Undark watch line suddenly began to suffer from anemia, softening of the bones and necrosis of the lower jaw, and then began to die one after another. The company managed to hide all this for a long time by bribing doctors from surrounding hospitals, who stamped all US Radium workers who approached them with a diagnosis of syphilis.
Eventually, the five workers banded together, hired a lawyer, and sued US Radium. During the trials, in particular, it turned out that chemist specialists and company managers were well aware of the effects of radiation on the body and worked with paint only in protective aprons and gloves, while ordinary women workers sometimes even painted their nails for fun.
In 1928, not wanting to bring the case to a jury trial, US Radium agreed to reconcile the parties and paid compensation – 10,000 pre-war dollars (or $137,000 in today’s money). Thanks to the story of the “radium girls,” a law on occupational diseases appeared in the United States, but that’s all.
An even louder scandal erupted in connection with the death of Eben Byers, a US amateur golf champion, an aspiring socialite and the owner of a small metallurgical plant in Pittsburgh. One day, while returning home by train after a Yale-Harvard football game, he fell from the top bunk and broke his arm, and Dr. Moyer, his physician, calmly added a patented remedy, “Radithor,” to the recipe for better bone healing.
This “medicine” was a deadly mixture of distilled water with radium-226 and radium-228 – 2 microcuries in total. Feeling better after several doses, Byers believed in “Raditor” as if it were the Lord God and began to use it in large doses, got his mistress Mary Hill hooked on it, sent boxes to all his friends and even gave it to his horse.
The end was a little predictable: Byers’ hair fell out and only six teeth remained, and when he finally turned to the doctors, they could only observe his demise: the bones became soft like clay, and the body was completely covered with cancerous tumors. In 1932, Byers died, and a short time later Mary Hill died with the same symptoms.
Scientists calculated that 37 micrograms of radium had accumulated in his bones, with a lethal dose of 10 micrograms.
Dr. William Bailey, who invented “Radithor,” had nothing to do with physics or medicine; he was a lawyer by training, and a half-educated one at that. Before the story with Byers, he also managed to work at the notorious US Radium, and among his other inventions was the same “Radioendocrinator”. Apparently, he himself did not disdain his own funds, since he died in 1948 from bladder cancer.
But even Byers’ death did not stop radiomedicine charlatans and radiation enthusiasts who bought their products. People continued to eat chocolate bars with radium, smear themselves with radioactive cosmetics, wear radium belts and drink water from regigators right up to the Enola Gay flight. And only then did everyone become truly scared.
The last radioactive swallows, all the best for children
But even Hiroshima could not scare everyone. Until the end of the 80s, uranium pallets were produced in Japan: inserts in a pack of cigarettes for “purifying” tobacco and active elements for saturating water with emanation. In the rest of the world, the fascination with radiation faded after the war, although not completely. And then they started taking care of the children.
Here is a toy known to the entire Internet:
It’s the Atomic Energy Lab, from the famous developer of children’s construction sets, Alfred Gilbert. By the way, the metal construction set made of holey trusses and screws, which everyone probably had in childhood, is also his invention.
It must be said that Gilbert wanted not so much to earn money as to make future scientists and engineers out of American children, so he approached the matter with all responsibility. Each Atomic Energy Lab box contained a radiometer, an electroscope, a spinthariscope for visually observing alpha particles, a cloud chamber, test sources of alpha, beta and gamma radiation, and four samples of uranium ores.
However, by that time the adults had already realized what this meant, and the toy was removed from all stores a year after the start of sales. It cost $50 back then, but these days collectors fetch as much as $8,000 for it online. You still won’t be able to sell or buy it; the administration deletes such lots instantly, because private trade in radioactive materials is prohibited throughout the world.
The pedoscope stayed much longer in everyday life. Here it is:
Essentially a long-lasting X-ray machine. Its inventors must have sincerely wanted to make life easier for parents and shoe store owners. After all, a child is not always able to explain exactly why new shoes are too tight for him.
But why ask and try to understand when you can just x-ray and see? The leg was placed in a niche located below, the child himself looked into one eyepiece, the parent looked into the second, and the seller looked into the third. In the USA, a similar shoe fluoroscope has been developed for adults.
During the 40s and 50s, about 10,000 such devices were installed in shoe stores around the world. In the late 50s they were removed from stores in the USA, and in the next decade in Europe.
However, in Switzerland such devices were used until the mid-70s.
