> Julia Thompson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >Erik Reuter wrote: > > >Bryon Daly wrote: > > > Anyone have any ideas what that might be? > > Radium, mixed with a phosphor, can make a nifty > glow in the dark effect. > > It used to be used extensively in watch dials. A > friend of mine tells a > > (possibly apocryphal) story how the makers of said > dials used to lick > > their fingers while assembling and years later a > number of them had > > cancerous growths in their tongues... > I'd heard they'd licked the *brushes* to get them > wet for a finer point > for painting the radium on the bits of the dials > they were supposed to paint.
"...For example, the widely publicized reports (3,4) on radium dial painters described cases of bone cancer in women who wet their brushes on their tongues to get a good "point" for painting radium on watch dials..." http://www.nih.gov/health/chip/od/radiation/ (Under Content, #3) > And maybe cancers of the throat were involved, as > well as those of the tongue. > > I heard this from my mother, both of whose parents > had easy access to > medical journals at the time the cancers were being > noted, and they > might very well have been her source. (On top of > it, one of them was a cancer researcher.) Several other cancers are also excessive in radium dial-painters: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11319051&dopt=Abstract "The classic health effects of occupational exposure to radium include osteosarcomas and fibrosarcomas of bone, carcinomas of paranasal sinuses and mastoid air cells, and microscopically and radiographically evident lesions of bone, along with fractures in highly exposed individuals..." As well as reduced fertility at higher exposures: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9008216&dopt=Abstract "...Radiation appeared to have no effect on fertility at estimated cumulative ovarian dose equivalents below 5 Sv; above this dose, however, statistically significant declines in both number of pregnancies and live births were observed. These trends persisted after multivariable adjustment for potential confounding variables and after exclusion of subjects contributing a potential classification or selection bias to the study. Additionally, the high-dose group experienced fewer live births than would have been expected based on population rates. There were no differences in time to first pregnancy between high- and low-dose groups. These results are consistent with earlier studies of gamma-ray exposures and suggest that exposure to high doses of radiation from internally deposited radium reduces fertility rather than inducing sterility." Debbi who _will_ respond to Dan's reply sometime soon... :) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Get better spam protection with Yahoo! Mail. http://antispam.yahoo.com/tools _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
