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Radium Poisoning: Discovered By Marie Curie

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What is Radium Poisoning? And how did it affect the lives of dial painters? Discovered by Marie Curie and Pierre Curie, they obtained radium from pitchblende a material which contains uranium. Undefined pitchblende was more radioactive than the uranium so, Marie separated it. The radium girls was a group of young female workers that worked at the factory in Orange, New Jersey painting dials on watches employed by the U.S Radium. Radium poisoning came from the self-luminous paint that the women workers used to paint dials. After being told the paint was absolutely safe they would put some of the paint on their teeth and faces. They did this to keep their brushes perfectly tipped to paint dials. The radium was actually a very dangerous causing
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Chapter five titled “Mercury” of The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum gives a fascinating story, about a woman named Gertie Gorman who was married to a man named Charles Webb. Many believed that her husband poisoned her because in her will “[she would leave] everything to her husband” (112) giving him a good motive for that action, but as the investigators opened up the body they found the presence of mercury bichloride, which was a “messy killer” (114) meaning it was hard to miss because of all the bloody inflammations. As the investigators looked more into the case they found out that Webb was not the person responsible for his wife’s death, however Webb was still prosecuted. Mercury can be poisonous if taken in extreme quantities causing the same things it did to Gertie’s body.

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Along with Radium, Arsenic, Chloroform, and wood alcohol are poisons that were very commonly used in the early 1900s. These common poisons were used often and were well known by the public, even though they posed a huge threat to anyone who came into contact with them. The form of a novel with chapters does a good job of grouping all of these common, but extremely dangerous poisons

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Throughout history the Legal System has faced many cases dealing with poisonings. In 2003 the case of Cynthia Sommer and her husband Sgt. Todd Sommer of the United States Marine Corps finds a contradicting case of poisoning. You will see the main problem is that the study of the body shows there must of been a poisoning ,but in the trial itself there is no evidence of the poisoning. doctors initially said that Sgt.

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Since the patient is given radiopharmaceutical, it may cause allergic reaction. Therefore, the patient must tell the technologist, doctor or nurse before the radiopharmaceutical is given to him/her. However, cases of allergic reactions are very rare (Cain, 2013). The second safety risk issue is radiation. Gamma rays of this system are ionizing radiation that causes changes in body’s molecules.

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The girls would also paint their fingernails, teeth, and face with the substance. according to the article, “The Radium Girls and the Generation that brushed its Teeth with Radioactive Toothpaste” on the cite http://www.messynessychic.com/2015/07/02/the-radium-girls-and-the-generation-that-brushed-its-teeth-with-radioactive-toothepaste/ it states, “At the dawn of the 1920s, an estimated total of 4,000 workers were hired by corporations in the U.S. and Canada alone to paint watch faces after the initial success in developing a glowin-the-dark radioactive paint.” The watch that the girls were using was also used for the military. According to the article called ‘Radium Girls’, found on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls it status, ‘... owners and the scientists familiar with the effects of radium carefully avoided any exposure to it themselves;...’ When the public and women started to get deathly ill and sick, they found out it was caused by the radiation for the paint.

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Most workers had weak immune systems conversely from poor ventilation

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Exposure to

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Although this chemical helped at the time, it ruined lives in the

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In Spokane, the EPA had created a scientific model that displays that an individual who had their daily diet and water source come from the Blue Creek had a “one in five chance of developing cancer from the added radiation” (Cornwall, 5). Hanford Engineer Works was made up of several hundreds of workers, all which resided in the

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  In addition, the floor and the factories were unregulated and sanitized so the place were a source of bacteria and diseases. Workers came to work inhaling different odors and dust and gradually damage their health. “A machine consisting of a hollow needle attached to a pump; by plunging this needle into the meat and working with his foot, a man could fill a ham with pickle in a few seconds.” This shows how dangerous it was for workers to get themselves injured working

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Events like these were common and expected from the work in most factories. Factories were not only dangerous to the people inside, but the people outside and the environment as

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A fungus that grew in the area at the time was known to cause vomiting, delusions and hallucinations along with muscle spasms (Blumberg, Jess). Toxicologists believe Ergot fungus in food was a cause for the girls

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Necrosis means…localized death of living tissue. To the best of my knowledge, this is a direct result of radium. Of radium poisoning. (Marnich 46).

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It was around this time that young girls, starting with Betty Parris and Ruth Putnam, began getting sick. Without an apparent cause, they fell unconscious, and would not wake (Miller, 8). Soon, other girls, including Betty’s cousin, Abigail, began to show bizarre symptoms. They had hallucinations, felt sensations like extreme cold, and generally became irrational and sickly. These are all main symptoms in ergot poisoning.

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Public Health Problem Radiation is described as energy that is commonly found in x-rays, nuclear power plants, radioactive materials, sunlight, and in many more sources according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, 2015). It can be used as a tool to diagnose and treat diseases. Although there are benefits of radiation, great exposure to radiation is a concern that may be linked to mutations, health problems, and even cancer. This is a problem in today’s society due to the social norms that influence the youth on beauty standards, which can lead to different forms of health issues.

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