The Postcard
A postcard that was posted in Blackpool on Monday the 1st. November 1915 to:
Master Sonny Clark,
Clark Villas,
Hardhorn,
Poulton-le-Fylde.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Will you please come in
good time tomorrow for I
want Auntie Mary to have
you at the bazaar very early
because there will be a lot
of little boys and girls there,
and I want you to see them.
Auntie Lillie xxxxxx"
The following was printed on the divided back of the card:
'This photograph was reproduced
by radium at the American Photo
Gallery & finished while you wait.
Pleasure Beach, Blackpool.'
Radium??? RADIUM??? Is the card radioactive? Read on ....
Radium
Radium is a chemical element with the symbol Ra and atomic number 88. Pure radium is silvery-white, but it readily reacts with nitrogen (rather than oxygen) on exposure to air, forming a black surface layer. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226, which has a half-life of 1600 years and decays into radon gas.
When radium decays, ionizing radiation is a by-product, which can excite fluorescent chemicals and cause radio-luminescence.
Radium, in the form of radium chloride, was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898 from ore mined at Jáchymov. They extracted the radium compound from uraninite, and published the discovery at the French Academy of Sciences five days later. Radium was isolated in its metallic state by Marie Curie and André-Louis Debierne through the electrolysis of radium chloride in 1911.
In nature, radium is found in uranium as well as a seventh of a gram per ton of uraninite. Adverse health effects are likely when radium is incorporated into biochemical processes. Currently, other than its use in nuclear medicine, radium has no commercial applications.
Formerly, radium was used as a radioactive source for radio-luminescent devices and also in radioactive quackery for its supposed curative powers. Today, these former applications are no longer in vogue because radium's toxicity has become known.
A sample of radium metal maintains itself at a higher temperature than its surroundings because of the radiation it emits – alpha particles, beta particles, and gamma rays.
The Discovery of Radium
Radium was discovered by Marie Skłodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre Curie on the 21st. December 1898, in a uraninite (pitchblende) sample from Jáchymov.
While studying the mineral earlier, the Curies removed uranium from it and found that the remaining material was still radioactive. In July 1898, while studying pitchblende, they isolated an element similar to bismuth which turned out to be polonium. They then isolated a radioactive mixture consisting of two components: compounds of barium, which gave a brilliant green flame color, and unknown radioactive compounds which gave carmine spectral lines that had never been documented before.
The Curies found the radioactive compounds to be very similar to the barium compounds, except they were less soluble. This discovery made it possible for the Curies to isolate the radioactive compounds and discover a new element in them. The Curies announced their discovery to the French Academy of Sciences on the 26th. December 1898.
The naming of radium dates to about 1899, from the French word radium, formed in Modern Latin from radius (ray): this was in recognition of radium's power of emitting energy in the form of rays.
In September 1910, Marie Curie and André-Louis Debierne announced that they had isolated radium as a pure metal through the electrolysis of radium chloride, producing radium–mercury amalgam. This amalgam was then heated in an atmosphere of hydrogen gas to remove the mercury, leaving pure radium metal.
Radium metal was first industrially produced at the beginning of the 20th. century.
The general historical unit for radioactivity, the curie, is based on the radioactivity of 226Ra, the amount of radioactivity released by one gram of radium is equivalent to one curie.
Historical Applications of Radium
Radium was formerly used in self-luminous paints for watches, aircraft switches, clocks, and instrument dials. A typical self-luminous watch that uses radium paint contains around 1 microgram of radium.
The Radium Girls
In the mid-1920s, a lawsuit was filed against the United States Radium Corporation by five dying "Radium Girls" – dial painters who had painted radium-based luminous paint on the dials of watches and clocks.
The dial painters had been instructed to lick 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 the body treats radium as calcium and deposits it in the bones, where radioactivity degrades marrow and can mutate bone cells.
During the litigation, it was determined that the company's scientists and management had taken considerable precautions to protect themselves from the effects of radiation, but it did not seem to protect their employees.
Additionally, for several years the company had attempted to cover up the effects and avoid liability by insisting that the Radium Girls were instead suffering from syphilis. This complete disregard for employee welfare had a significant impact on the formulation of occupational disease labor law.
As a result of the lawsuit, the adverse effects of radioactivity became widely known, and radium-dial painters were instructed in proper safety precautions and provided with protective gear.
In particular, dial painters no longer licked paint brushes to shape them. Radium was still used in dials as late as the 1960's, but there were no further injuries to dial painters. This demonstrated that the harm to the Radium Girls could easily have been avoided.
From the 1960's the use of radium paint was discontinued. In many cases luminous dials were implemented with non-radioactive fluorescent materials excited by light; such devices glow in the dark after exposure to light, but the glow fades.
Clocks, watches, and instruments dating from the first half of the 20th century, often in military applications, may have been painted with radioactive luminous paint. They are usually no longer luminous; however, this is not due to radioactive decay of the radium (which has a half-life of 1600 years) but to the fluorescence of the zinc sulfide fluorescent medium being worn out by the radiation from the radium.
The appearance of an often thick layer of green or yellowish brown paint in devices from this period suggests a radioactive hazard. The radiation dose from an intact device is relatively low and usually not an acute risk; but the paint is dangerous if released and inhaled or ingested.
Commercial Use of Radium
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.
In the U.S., nasal radium irradiation was also administered to children to prevent middle-ear problems or enlarged tonsils from the late 1940's through to the early 1970's.
Medical Use of Radium
Radium (usually in the form of radium chloride or radium bromide) was used in medicine to produce radon gas, which in turn was used as a cancer treatment. However, many treatments that were used in the early 1900's are not used any more because of the harmful effects that radium bromide exposure caused. Some examples of these effects are anaemia, cancer, and genetic mutations. Safer gamma emitters such as 60Co, which is less costly and available in larger quantities, are usually used today to replace the historical use of radium in this application.
Howard Atwood Kelly, one of the founding physicians of Johns Hopkins Hospital, was a major pioneer in the medical use of radium to treat cancer. His first patient was his own aunt in 1904, who died shortly after surgery. Kelly was known to use excessive amounts of radium to treat various cancers and tumors. As a result, some of his patients died from radium exposure.
His method of radium application was inserting a radium capsule near the affected area, then sewing the radium "points" directly to the tumor.
Hazards of Radium
Radium is highly radioactive, and its immediate daughter, radon gas, is also radioactive. When ingested, 80% of the ingested radium leaves the body through the feces, while the other 20% goes into the bloodstream, mostly accumulating in the bones.
Exposure to radium, internal or external, can cause cancer and other disorders, because radium and radon emit alpha and gamma rays upon their decay, which kill and mutate cells. At the time of the Manhattan Project in 1944, the "tolerance dose" for workers was set at 0.1 micrograms of ingested radium.
Some of the biological effects of radium include the first case of "radium-dermatitis", reported in 1900, two years after the element's discovery. The French physicist Antoine Becquerel carried a small ampoule of radium in his waistcoat pocket for six hours, and reported that his skin became ulcerated.
Pierre and Marie Curie were so intrigued by radiation that they sacrificed their own health to learn more about it. Pierre Curie attached a tube filled with radium to his arm for ten hours, which resulted in the appearance of a skin lesion, suggesting the use of radium to attack cancerous tissue as it had attacked healthy tissue.
Handling of radium has been blamed for Marie Curie's death due to aplastic anemia. A significant amount of radium's danger comes from its daughter radon: being a gas, it can enter the body far more readily than can its parent radium.
Today, 226Ra is considered to be the most toxic of the quantity radioelements, and it must be handled in tight glove boxes with significant airstream circulation that is then treated to avoid escape of its daughter 222Rn to the environment.
Old ampoules containing radium solutions must be opened with care because radiolytic decomposition of water can produce an overpressure of hydrogen and oxygen gas. The world's largest concentration of 226Ra is stored within the Interim Waste Containment Structure, approximately 9.6 mi (15.4 km) north of Niagara Falls, New York.
The Second Battle of Agua Prieta
So what else happened on the day that Auntie Lillie posted the card?
Well, on the 1st. November 1915, Mexican revolutionary leader Pancho Villa and his soldiers clashed with troops under command of future Mexican president Plutarco Elías Calles at Agua Prieta, Sonora, Mexico.
Despite having a force of less than half the size of Villa's force of 15,000, Calles was able to defeat Villa and help Mexican leader Venustiano Carranza gain control of northern Mexico.
The Use of a Roundel
Also on that day, the Royal Naval Air Service adopted the same roundel as used by the Royal Flying Corps, and discontinued the use of the Union Jack on fuselage sides.
The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition
Also on that day, expedition leader Ernest Shackleton called off a march to Paulet Island as deteriorating ice conditions made the surface too rough to effectively maneuver boats and supplies.
The expedition returned to the wrecked Endurance which had been slowly sinking for seven days.
Marion Eugene Carl
The 1st. November 1915 also marked the birth in Hubbard, Oregon of the American Marine Air Officer Marion Eugene Carl.
Marion was a test pilot for the first jet engine planes at Naval Air Station Patuxent River. He was also a two-time recipient of the Navy Cross, four Legion of Merits, five Distinguished Flying Crosses, and 14 Air Medals.
Marion died in 1998.
Lewis Waller
The day also marked the death of the English actor Lewis Waller.
Lewis, who was born in 1860, was best known for his collaborations with the Theatre Royal Haymarket, including the premier lead role in the Oscar Wilde play An Ideal Husband.
To see a photograph of Lewis Waller, please search for the tag 28LEW25