The women were instructed to point their brushes in this way because using rags or a water rinse caused them to use more time and material, as the paint was made from powdered radium, gum arabic and water.įive of the women in New Jersey challenged their employer in a case over the right of individual workers who contract occupational diseases to sue their employers under New Jersey's occupational injuries law, which at the time had a two-year statute of limitations, but settled out of court in 1928. The incidents occurred at three different factories in United States: one in Orange, New Jersey, beginning around 1917 one in Ottawa, Illinois, beginning in the early 1920s and a third facility in Waterbury, Connecticut, also in the 1920s.Īfter being told that the paint was harmless, the women in each facility ingested deadly amounts of radium after being instructed to "point" their brushes on their lips in order to give them a fine tip some also painted their fingernails, faces and teeth with the glowing substance. The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with self-luminous paint. ^ "Medical Collectors Association - Newsletter 20" (PDF).Byers, wealthy Pittsburgh steel manufacturer and sportsman, who died here Wednesday at the Doctors' Hospital from causes attributed to radium poisoning resulting from the drinking of water containing radium in solution.
Federal and local agencies, as well as medical authorities in various parts of the country, were stirred to action yesterday as a result of the death of Eben M. Friends Alarmed to Find Mayor Has Been Drinking Radium-Charged Water for Last Six Months". Maker of "Radithor" Denies It Killed Byers, as Does Victim's Physician in Pittsburgh. Health Department Checks Drug Wholesalers. ^ "Death Stirs Action on Radium 'Cures'."When 'energy' drinks actually contained radioactive energy". ^ Literary Digest, 16 April 1932 Archived 3 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine.1990) describing the Byers incident was titled "The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off". īyers's death led to the strengthening of the Food and Drug Administration's powers and the demise of most radiation-based patent medicines. As a comparison, the roughly 0.0169 g of potassium-40 present in a typical human body produces approximately 4,400 becquerels. Byers was buried in a lead-lined coffin when exhumed in 1965 for study, his remains were still highly radioactive and measured at 225,000 becquerels. Įben Byers, a wealthy American socialite, athlete, industrialist and Yale College graduate, died from Radithor radium poisoning in 1932.
The expensive product was claimed to cure impotence, among other ills. It was advertised as "A Cure for the Living Dead" as well as "Perpetual Sunshine". Bailey, a dropout from Harvard College, who was not a medical doctor. The owner of the company and head of the laboratories was listed as William J. Radithor was manufactured from 1918 to 1928 by the Bailey Radium Laboratories, Inc., of East Orange, New Jersey. This history has led to the strengthening of regulatory control of pharmaceutical and radioactive products. The time of Radithor and radioactive elixirs ended in 1932, with the premature death of one of its most fervent users, Eben Byers, an American industrialist. It consisted of triple distilled water containing at a minimum 1 microcurie (37 kBq) each of the radium 226 and 228 isotopes.
Radithor was a patent medicine that is a well-known example of radioactive quackery and specifically of excessively broad and pseudoscientific application of the principle of radiation hormesis. A bottle of Radithor at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in New Mexico, United States
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