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OKAY BACK FROM THE CHEMISTRY LAB ⚗️

Radium Was Found Inside A Uranium Ore Called Pitchblende

Marie And Pierre Curie Found At Least Two Radioactive Materials In It

One Was Named Polonium And The Other Was Named Radium

In That Ore Radium Turned Up Paired With Barium

Radium And Barium Differ Little In Chemical Terms

Finding Radium Did Not Mean Having Much Of It

Curie Called Pitchblende From Joachimsthal The Best Source

That Ore Had Long Been Processed To Make Uranium Salts

Once The Uranium Was Taken Out A Residue Was Left Behind

That Residue Still Held The Radium And Polonium

Curie Wrote That They Normally Used It As Raw Material

Each Ton Of It Contained A Few Decigrams Of Radium

Isolating Radium Took Several Years Of Unremitting Effort

In 1910 Marie Curie And Debierne Isolated Radium As A Metal

The Metal Melts At About 700 Degrees Celsius

In Air It Is Very Unstable And Breaks Down Water Vigorously

Solid Radium Salts Are About 5 Million Times As Radioactive

That Figure Compares Them With An Equal Weight Of Uranium

All That Activity Makes Radium Salts Glow On Their Own

Marie Curie Had Already Shared The 1903 Nobel Prize In Physics

In 1911 She Won The Nobel Prize In Chemistry On Her Own

Her Prize Was For Discovering Radium And Polonium

It Also Honored Her Work Isolating Radium And Studying It

Radium Is A Radioactive Metal That Occurs In Nature

It Forms When Uranium And Thorium Decay In The Environment

Uranium 238 Starts A Decay Chain That Ends In Lead 206

Radium 226 Forms Partway Along That Chain

Thorium Has Its Own Chain That Includes Radium 228 And 224

Every Isotope Of Radium Is Radioactive

Half Lives Of These Isotopes Range From Days To Centuries

Radium 224 Has A Half Life Of 3.66 Days

For Radium 228 The Half Life Is 5.75 Years

Radium 226 Has A Half Life Of 1,600 Years

As It Decays Radium Produces Radon Gas

In Nature Radium Occurs At Trace Levels In Virtually All Rock And Soil

Water And Plants And Animals Have Trace Levels Too

Where Rocks And Soils Have More Radium The Groundwater Typically Does

Phosphate Rocks Typically Contain Slightly Higher Levels

Even So The Radium In Food And Air Is Very Low

In Drinking Water The Level Is Generally Low

Local Geology Gives Some Regions More Radium In Their Water

The EPA Says Everyone Has Some Exposure To Radium

Historically It Was Also Used In Medicine And To Light Aircraft Gauges

Soon After Radium Was Discovered A Group Of Practitioners Took It Up

They Cared More About Its Effect On The Body Than On Tumors

Their Approach Was Called Mild Radium Therapy

Patients Took Microgram Amounts By Mouth Or By Injection

It Was Often Offered As A Cure For Rheumatic Diseases

High Blood Pressure And Metabolic Disorders Were On That List Too

Radium Has A Modern Medical Use As Well

On May 15 2013 The US FDA Approved A Drug Made With Radium 223

The Approval Covered Castration Resistant Prostate Cancer

It Applied When The Cancer Had Reached Bone And Caused Symptoms

The Cancer Also Had No Known Spread To Other Organs

An FDA Review Calls It The First Alpha Emitting Radiation Drug

Outside Medicine Radium Also Went Into Paint

In The Early 1900s People Learned It Could Make Paint Glow

It Was Mixed With A Phosphorescent Material Such As Zinc Sulfide

The Result Was A Paint That Glowed On Its Own

Sabin Von Sochocky Studied Medicine And Atomic Physics

He Is Credited With Inventing One Such Paint

His Version Was Used Widely In The United States

It Was Also Cheaper Than The Paint Developed In Europe

In 1913 He Began Selling Watches That Glowed In The Dark

Dial Painting Firms Prospered Early On From Wartime Demand

One Study Has Followed Thousands Of Radium Dial Painters

They Were Mainly Women