Glowing in the Dark - The Radium Girls
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- Use Tab for a Cause to turn your web surfing into charitable donations, it takes only 30 seconds to get started! tab.gladly.io/r...
If you happen to like our videos and have a few bucks to spare to support our efforts, check out our Patreon page where we've got a variety of perks for our Patrons, including Simon's voice on your GPS and the ever requested Simon Whistler whistling package: / todayifoundout
→Subscribe for new videos every day!
www.youtube.co...
Never run out of things to say at the water cooler with TodayIFoundOut! Brand new videos 7 days a week!
In this video:
On December 21, 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered the radioactive element radium (in the form of radium chloride), extracting it from uraninite. They first removed the uranium from the uraninite sample and then found that the remaining matter was still radioactive, so investigated further. Along with the barium in the remaining substance, they also detected spectral lines that were crimson carmine, which no one had yet documented or, apparently, observed. These spectral lines were being given off by radium chloride, which they managed to separate from the barium. Five days later, they presented their findings to the French Academy of Sciences.
Want the text version?: www.todayifound...
Sources:
www.time.com/ti...
66.147.244.135/~enviror4/people/radiumgirls/
en.wikipedia.or...
www.damninteres...
articles.couran...
www.wired.com/2...
www.waterburyob...
www.nytimes.com...
en.wikipedia.or...
en.wikipedia.or...
www.todayifound...
en.wikipedia.or...
Image Credit:
commons.wikime...
commons.wikime...
commons.wikime...
commons.wikime...
commons.wikime...
commons.wikime...
commons.wikime...
www.flickr.com...
commons.wikime...
vimeo.com/2130...
commons.wikime...
commons.wikime...
commons.wikime...
commons.wikime...
en.wikipedia.o...
Music from Jukedeck - create your own at jukedeck.com.
Now that you know about the Radium Girls check out this video and you'll discover that Over Half the People Involved in the Hindenburg Disaster Survived:
th-cam.com/video/FpRA3DR4GXM/w-d-xo.html
Today I Found Out is it okay I found it funny because Curie basically invented glow sticks
Wouldn't be hard for them to find a lawyer nowadays
Today I Found Out Simon Hitler
Today I Found Out I ain't Hitler it's funny
Today I found out the US gov is a joke and helped kill off its own people
"No, no the girls are fine. Positively glowing with radiant health."
[jaw falls off]
I feel guilty for laughing
Not great, not terrible.
they buried some of them in lead coffins
www.ttbook.org/interview/women-toxic-glow
Maybe this is where zombies came from
PixelOutlaw this comment deserves way more likes 😂
Jesus Christ, imagine going to the doctor to pull a tooth, and your jaw just falls apart.
Check out this guy. He didn't paint dials, but he consumed thousands of vials of radium laced water as a "health tonic". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Byers
Makes you wonder what new products we use today that will turn out to be horrific to your health later.(*cough cough* vape pens *cough cough*)
There's not really anything new about vape pens. They just vaporise a liquid so that you can inhale it. The worst case is that you bye a e-liquid that has something it shouldn't in it or a pen that over heats the liquid burning it. The latter is no worse than smoking tobacco and the former is a risk with just about everything.
And because this guy was a celebrity, the government took notice. Up until that time, the suffering dial painters were beneath notice.
the face i made when he got to that part, oh man
I love the fact that the lady's hate for her job and therefore putting little effort into it saved her life.
Srta.TacoMal same :)
She's an inspiration to slackers everywhere.
You shouldnt do things you dont like thats the message guys
dan cussin me
That's usually how it works. People diss draft dodgers but at least they live.
"The girls are in perfect condition" --> "They were crippled already when we found them"
*puts off trial to try to kill them off*
When the boss says its safe but they wear lead aprons and use tongs when they handle it. You know some one is lying.
"Its safe!!"
"If its safe then why are you wearing safety gear?"
"your fired"
@@abbie_joan that's capitalism for you
And look what's going on today imagine a world a whole entire world believing in a pLandemic going to walk right off the cliff and take a vaccine 🤦♀️ people will never learn! STUPID SHEEPLE!
@@privateGOAWAY24 calm down, your foil hat will fall off.
"You're perfectly fine, Grace."
"My teeth are falling out."
"That's perfectly normal. They just need to get out of the way for the new teeth you've got growing."
"...You're not a medical doctor, are you?"
"I mean, _technically_ no..."
😰
I recently finished reading "The Radium Girls - The Dark Story of America's Shining Women," by Kate Moore. Excellent book about their struggle against the lies of their employers, the ignorance of the medical profession and the indifference of the government, which would set the foundation for workers' health rights. And yet the same battle was fought again and again, with lead, asbestos, and so on. Even to this day businesses routinely lie to employees and the public about safety.
Artificial sweeteners....
unsafe office sex with the janitor.
Yes and they are getting worse.
Ooh sounds like a great read!
It's also play
When people say we don't need regulations I think about incidents like these and laugh.
Yeap, they killed and seriously harmed a bunch of people so an extra law would have stopped them!
Just don't eat paint..
'Triangle Shirtwaist Fire'
Look into it.
Spoiler: it's horrific AF.
@DynamicSeq The girl who didn't still ended up with health problems later on. Radiation exposure is always dangerous.
Unimaginable that people could so easily become such monsters. This wasn't a "greedy corporation", this was a group of people that decided together to let young women suffer and die, so that they wouldn't get inconvenienced. I was almost to the point of throwing up by the end of this video.
DrB1900, I agree. I'm constantly appalled at how many monsters there are in this world, that will let people suffer and die early so they can make a few more dollars.
That's how cars were for decades. No seat belts, garbage brakes, steering columns that could IMPALE you in a head-on and steel dashboards so your jaw's smashed in if you hit it. Oh and not even your dog was safe with the engine coolant dripping out the radiator (There was no overflow tank.)
I think Jack explains it best in the movie Fight Club when he states that a car company will only issue a recall notice once the potential maximum payout over a lawsuit exceeds that of the cost of the recall. It's all just numbers and lives rarely matter on the bottom line of a company's accounts.
@@krashd I guess you buy only local grown no GMO organic food eh? No pre packaged foods, no nothing right? I mean after all everyone knows mass grown food is not as good as local... but it is much cheaper however... unless your playing a numbers game you would be buying all that stuff all the time... guess what the gov uses the exact same deal... they assign a value to each life... they look at cost of a project and how many people will be impacted... if cost > peoples life worth... project is not done.
Welcome to the real world... where I am sure you don't drive the safest car on the road because it COSTS TOO MUCH... where i am sure you don't buy ONLY non gmo organic local food...
*Mysteriously, My grandmother had a backwards "12 & xemiT" on her forehead, from sleeping too close to her clock.*
Simon, a good story for you to tell is about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire which kill 123 women in 1911. They also worked under horrid conditions and were locked in their factory when a fire broke out.
Isn't that the one where it was said that lovers were kissing before committing suicide by jumping out the windows to avoid burning?
My great grandmother told me about that story when I was a kid. Then I read about it during a Business Finance & Marketing class in college. Definitely would make a good topic for Simon to cover in a future video.
Also the terrible factory collapse in Indonesia a couple years ago!
Tracy McMillan everyone learns that in highschool, at least if you pay attention
@@thewanderer1598 My school never teached that?
Companies and their greed...they don't seem to care how much blood is on their hands as long as they make money
GreenSchwinnOfficial Dominator vs paternilstic society.
GreenSchwinnOfficial they only exist to make as much money as possible. Doing anything to reduce profits like following basic ethics can open you up to lawsuits from shareholders.
It isn't "companies" that do this. Its people. Just people.
they didnt know that those girl would put radium on them ....
notoriousbig3k they actually told them to use their mouths to get a fine point on their paint brushes. Also look up how the discovers died
I'm calling it, this will be made into a movie within ten years.
i'll see your ten years and raise you within seven years.
That would be a sad movie with a shitty ending
i'd watch that :D
There is a movie
Except they'll turn half of them black and make all the scientists black or trans females fighting the white patriarchy
Damn the whole story behind this is so sad and eerie.... It's a shame what greed can do to people
"Stay away from all kinds of greed." - Jesus Christ
Djmax ikr
I've heard the story a few times lately. It's so sad and makes me so angry for these girls.
Excellent video by the way. Very informative and well presented. One of my favorites.
Really? You're so mad?
Well do yourself a favor and don't google the Triangle Shirt Factory, or the The Bhopal disaster, or the building of the Pyramids - if ya wanna go back far enough.
The great bulk of average humanity has been at the behest, in body and soul, of a self appointed elite since before time was counted.
At least the triangle shirtwaist factory is included in textbooks (or at least has been - I can’t vouch for ones that kids get nowadays, but it was a topic discussed at least three times in my schooling). As far as I know the radium girls is hardly covered, particularly because their experiences would overshadow the depictions of the roaring 20’s schools discuss before covering the Great Depression.
My great grandma was a radium girl and my whole family now has a predisposition to thyroid tumors and cancer.
My uncle has thyroid cancer and every single one of his 4 children had tumors. Another of my cousins just got diagnosed with a thyroid tumor about a month ago and we just found a mass larger than a golfball on my 13 year old daughter’s thyroid. I knew my grandma painted watch dials and they jokingly called her radioactive but my husband just showed me your video I had no idea just how bad things were.
My great grandma passed away at 92 years old back when I was in school.
Our family is riddled with cancer.
I'm so sorry. The same is happening at the Bridgeton Missouri waste Area. It smells something bad. Residents suffer from diseases also and thats now. I know that's not the right name. Sorry
@@lynneporter1351 the golf ball size mass on my daughter ended up being an 8.5cm tumor and it was papillary thyroid carcinoma. She had her entire thyroid removed a few month ago.
@@tracyrood9609 Are you religious?
@Reject Evolution yes I am.
That is so scary. We still have a lot to learn about Radiation and it's potential generational consequences.
I would suggest that that US Radium was run by Lex Luthor, but he tends to be a tad more subtle with his evil master plans...
My great grandmother built bombs during WW2 and was one of the "blonde bombshell" girls. I'd love to see a video about that :)
Yeah! Or other jobs women did during WW2
My grandma worked doing something with materials. Tarps I think. She's dead (RIP) so I can't ask. I do remember she said it gave her eczema.
ItsBowmanTV cool
So she contributed to killing people. I know she was doing it for a living, but there's nothing to be proud of.
Layth Alkhaer .....They were killing nazis you idoit XD... oh those poor poor nazis.
Layth Alkhaer Its not the ideal. We should try to avoid conflict. But if a dictator in europe is taking over many countries and killing a ton of people you need to go to war.
We had a radium dial factory here in Tucson. The building was knocked down and the area is still considered to be contaminated.
The dangers of giving ground-breaking scientific discoveries to the public without knowing what long term effects it may have and the dangers of greedy corporations, truly frightening.
Ghqebvful Oh, you mean like nuclear power?
dafttool Nuclear power can be amazing, I don't know. I just mean we need to study things and educate people on them before releasing them unto people.
Ghqebvful I imagine they had no idea that radium was dangerous because seeing things at a microlevel was still a new thing at the time.
That was part of my point. We needed to study the effects before mass producing it. Then when it was seen to be harmful stop trying to keep making money off peoples suffering and get them as much help as possible.
Ghqebvful
Corporations cant get away with stuff like this. Only governments can. If desani put lead in their water there would be a class action lawsuit on their doorstep and they would never see the light of day again. When the government puts lead in the water there is no one to sue. Us radium was a government contract.
Capitalism at its finest.
jerome zhao definitely. Communism only killed hundreds of millions. No comparison!
@@TheRevering and capitalism hasn't?
Government... Allowed us radium to get away with it.
Embrace the third position \O
Dyson Spreybar Capitialism allows the existence of free press as well as democracy, as opposed to communism which solely relies on the regime being competent and benevolent to its ppl
It's unbelievable that corporations can get away with things like this. It's truly despicable.
Yep, previously it also happened with lead gasoline and also with cigarettes. Climate change denying is also a much lobbied point by corporations who benefit from loose regulations. They even managed to turn public opinion sufficiently enough against climate scientists. People don't learn.
Fly Beep ? Sounds like you need to check your info.
Because a lot of the info regarding climate change previously known as global warming.
Has been and keeps being falsified and predictions keep being wrong.
When real data concerning the temperature both in predictions and data collected shows mild differences.
Hard to explain all the neunce about geological history's,how weather on other planetes in our solar system is going through similar changes.
How plants grow,that things are being blow out of proportion when talking about weather/food/war/etc.
All I can say is that I would like to try and save the world but...what's to save your chasing a boogey man and dancing to the tune of rich/becoming richer people/country's/company's.
And that the more I learn about the world. The more I step back and go wait...something is not right. If the world is burning why are guys at the top of these green agendas getting so much richer while flying there private jets and having electric bills enough to power my house for the rest of my life.
The list just keeps going.
I am bad at wording things.
But there is more then your are seeing going on.
And that's how they want it to be...then again some of them believe it as much as you do.
Cam Good
Corporations cant get away with stuff like this. Only governments can. If desani put lead in their water there would be a class action lawsuit on their doorstep and they would never see the light of day again. When the government puts lead in the water there is no one to sue. Us radium was a government contract.
TheFreePantheist corporations get away with things all the time. if they can hide it or offset their waste on consumers for profits (e.g. disposable items, poor working conditions like black lung, limb loss, etc) no one will notice. no one really seems to care that Chinese or Congolese workers today face terrible working conditions, despite all the cheap goods and labor we get from them. as for lead, old plumbing work was done with lead (Pb) because it's easy to work with. the word plumbing actually comes from the Latin word for lead, plumbum. there's supposed to be a protective "scale" or coating on the inside that needs to be maintained with treated water, but many local government are negligent and fail to meet their own regulations or are too stubborn to accept federal infrastructure grants and millions of people get hurt as a result. it's our politicians that are to blame.
I think what's even sadder is that it's totally believable...
Same thing happened with cigarettes. Still people defend what they like as if there was nothing wrong with it ever.
bullshit. cigarettes haven't killed me yet at 63.
david wells My grandad was 54. He used to smoke daily and he died last year due to lung problems. You should quit. Get a nicotine patch or nicotine gum. Please stop before it kills you.
david wells, dip it
There is a very good reason it is still illegal to have cigarette ad's on TV to this day.
@@nutellaeatingpanda My father died horribly of lung cancer at 53 and my mother suffered with lung cancer more than two years, finally dead at age 73.. They both smoked 2-3 packs a day. All the people who claim smoking does not kill, are delusional addicts who can rationalize their behavior.
Radium Paint is irl Bone Hurting Juice
Matsuda Industries fuck off
It makes your body and eyes deteriorate.. what my science teacher said when my class laughed is “it’s not very funny when there jaw falls off” and all my class stopped laughing in a snap
*Flower_ _Power* your english teacher was obviously bad
A. Burr it’s my science teacher and he only did it because my class was acting like it was a joke and they didn’t listen to him
JESUS CHRIST GORDON RAMSEY
*deep breath*
Well... this won't help with my tooth falling out nightmares.
I am sorry to hear that.
This story and many others like it are perfect examples of why we need government regulations. Just sayin'.
Alexis
Yeah, cause the corporation totally didn't just payoff tons of government officials and blatantly rewrite reports in their favor.
No, what you need are more people with mothers that taught them basic human decency and strict punishments for people who so obviously violate it.
It wouldn't have helped if the risks weren't established.
I also wonder if those most poisoned were taking in large quantities intentionally, given radium's previous reputation for being healthful.
Alexis Cause government is effecent. They don't spend all the tax money on kick backs. A set of stairs doesn't cost 60k tax payer money gets done diy by a citizen for 600 bucks then torn out and quoted for 50k.
All the regulations in the world do nothing without regulators - our current system has routed the regulators, and allows corporations - and even meat producers - to 'self regulate.' You can have people write up, and pass, more regulations, but it isn't getting you anywhere.
Three Percenter the stairs you are referencing were poorly built and completely unsafe.
Radium is in the same column on the periodic table as calcium. This means it is chemically similar to calcium, but it's heavier and radioactive. Which means the body will substitute calcium for it. Which...you can imagine what that does to your teeth and bones.
Oh. =( I knew about the plight of the radium girls, but I had no idea that their employers knew about the risk and lied about it. And then worked so hard to cover their own arses at the awful expense to the victims of their malfeasance.
That's just awful.
Not commonly known is that Sabin von Sochocky, inventor od "Undark" paint used to stick his arm in cans of the paint up to the elbow. As you can imagine, it didn't end well.
Did you know even today, a radiation meter picks up a crazy level above their graves.
A Geiger counter.
Their bodies and bones glowed. Some of them even had to be buried in led coffins from what I’ve heard.
I feel bad for the Curies, they made amazing discoveries in science but at the same time dug many peoples graves without knowing it. Certainly wasn't their fault, however.
Last time I was this early was when they said radiation was good for you
well because it looks like LNT is wrong. radiation is good for you until a certain point.
I live right next to Ottawa, il. They had the westclox building here and once that was closed they opened Luminous processes inc. Ottawa has a statue up of radium girls. i went to high school in Ottawa. They took the buildings down and buried the bricks in the earth. So many people here have cancer, and the bricks in the earth will still set off Geiger counters. Crazy to think I've lived in an area of history my whole life.
Corporations are usually evil when left to their own devices.
Carter Kinoy yep
What does a doctor do to patients?
He Helium
And if he can't?
He Barium
[Yoshikage_Kira] Funny but, not true. Morticians bury people.
Gotta work cesium into that statement somehow......yeah!
john m
Patient has drugs, but not enough for the doctor?
He cesium.
Matt Marzula 🙄
That had to have been horrifying for those poor women. When we hear about stories that happened long ago, we don't realize that those people had emotions and fears, too. They're gone now but I'm so sorry they had to endure that living nightmare of cruelty and despair.
Can you imagine all the chemical compounds that we are surrounding ourselves with today. That in 100 years from now people will say we were stupid.
Mickey The maltipoo:
One simple example, lithium batteries in our phones, tablets and game consoles. Such battery can easily explode with a high intensity burst if dented or damaged or over heated. Yet we use it so close to our face and put it next to our highly flammable cotton bed when sleeping.
Mickey The maltipoo My money’s on essential oils
My daily dose of History Thank you Simon
And now for another bonus fact.
no wonder this was sooo long
TIL THEN, Death You could also get your daily dose of radiation if you lived back then..
Also daily dose of outrage to asshole companies who caused death to their workers and not taking responsibility.
daily dose of internet really?
This legitimately made me upset.
Azonavox Same.
"That glow isn't natural.."
"You're right, let's paint our teeth with it!"
i thought its a video about a girl band named The Radium Girls and wore glow in the dark costumes... why did i think of that lol
f*ck off
Tell Me This Though that would sound like an awesome thing, sadly is not the case.
ginnrollins211 ikr? i would go to Radium Girl's concert 😏
Tell Me This Dude, copyright that idea 😂 that sounds like an awesome band 10/10 would check it out
So... atomic kitten isn't a glowing baby cat then?
The symptoms sound kind of like "Phossy Jaw", or phosphorus poisoning, causing the jawbone to rot from exposure to white posphorus, used in old matches.
That’s what the girls also discovered, that radium and Phossy Jaw were similar.
"Capitalism works!" Right. The Radium girls who died untimely deaths because of capitalist greed would feel that way if you could revive them and ask what they think. Nothing has changed, injustice because of greed still happens today. Look at climate change and oil companies. Healthcare and insurance and pharmaceutical companies. The military industrial complex. Higher education and student loans. The economy and the banks and Wall Street. The list doesn't end there.
Simon Cowell This can also happen in communism, as stalin has proven quite well.
They got pennies in the lawsuit.
@@Fiiischinator Stalin wasn't Communist.
The college and healthcare issue can be traced back to government programs causing costs to inflate, though.
Fiiischinator So? Clearly both systems are bad. We need to stop looking at this black and white.
Reminds me of asbestos, and fossil fuels.
Lead infused fuel?
Corey Doyle people used to dye everything with arsenic! :)
Green dye used to be made of arsenic and used in tons of products including foods. Ah humans thinking they're clever with dangerous substances always trying to control the Earth, and it fights back ...
Arsenic-Laden Wallpaper, 1800s.
WrinkleinTime42 at that time we didn't know what we know now that's why there's a lot of that were made of carcinogens. Heck there might be thing today that are bad for us but no one knows yet
Tyler Mai True.... I think about that quite often actually.
Woman: *jaw breaks off*
Doctor: "You're in perfect health, don't be silly"
"Even bottled radium water...I died"
Please never stop making these high quality videos!
I can remember getting my first watch that glowed in the dark. My grandmother wasn’t too happy, she asked me how many people died so I could have my "toy". Can really make Christmas a bumer!
Depending what year you got the watch. Let me explain, any watches made after 1968, it would contain radium because modern glow in the dark paint is made with Zinc Sulfide and Copper, but anything before 1968, then of course that would have been a concern.
This video really gave me a warm feeling about large corporations and their treatment and general attitude towards the common worker.
Sadly, to reach the top of the market share, companies often throw their workers under the nearest bus! Slavery may have been legally abolished after the Civil War but that doesn't mean it was stopped.
Great video, Happy Labor Day!
Everyone sees the large corporations. Nobody seems to notice the large government that enables and protects them.
Paul Simmons well said. Fuck capitalism
Milo Rodriguez
Exactly. Being poisoned in government owned socialist factory is all the rage right now.
Paul Benedict in socialism the means of production are owned by the workers, not the government. As a result pay is better, conditions are heslthier, benefits are greater... And with better pay consumerism runs smoothly and prosperously. You're thinking of communism my friend
Milo Rodriguez
That's not true. In real socialism means of production are owned by elves and pink unicorns. They provide much better benefits. How dare you misrepresent true socialism you heretic.
I can remember having an old alarm clock in our farmhouse that had glowing numbers and hands when it was dark. I have always had anemia and teeth issues and arthritis etc. Holy cow..... This all makes sense to me now.
that wouldn't do anything to you. as long as you don't touch the numbers themselves. even then you need like 1000 clocks to kill you
Wad it a radium dial clock
so humans just found a new element and were like “let’s put this on our faces!”
Mascara has bat shit in it, what do you expect
@@Jack-dw4cd I'm sorry it has *what*
@@daisanity6457 hell yea brother
Nice video for Labor Day (US).
next, how about you talk about the young women in the UK making matches and dying/getting disfigured due to phosphorus they worked with
Or the 'madhatters' of Europe who got off their tits on mercury.
... I was born & raised in East Orange, NJ, which borders on Orange, NJ ... where the Westclox Company had located their watch and clock-face dial radium painting factory.
My family had 3 Westclox alarm clocks that had radium-painted dials, and I, as a kid, thought they were all kinds of Magical & Neat. Moreover, in the late '50's, my parents bought me a certain Gilbert Chemistry set-- for my "Big Christmas Gift"-- that featured an even *more* Magical & Neat gizmo called a *"Scintillometer".* This was an aluminum jeweller's magnifying eye-cup type loupe, that had a solid disc of-- you guessed it-- *radium* mounted a little distance from the glass magnifying lens.
So, at night-- or in a closet, or underneath my bedsheets during daytime-- once my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I could look through the magnifying loupe, and see teensy glittering galaxies of exploding stars, created by the photons released when radioactive particles collided with the glass lens.
All these Fun facts didn't deter me, however, in the least from immediately buying one of those Super-Cool softly glowing titanium cylinder-caged glass ampoule keychains, filled with a gaseous radioactive isotope of Hydrogen, namely, *Tritium.* It's continuously glowing Life was guaranteed to be about 26 years ... and after I did the arithmetic, I figured out that I could be buried with it. As a night-light :P
Considering that I'd spent my childhood playing outside every chance I got-- not giving a second thought to my country's rampant atmospheric testing of atomic bombs (along with You-Know-Whoski)-- it's a wonder I can't read comic books underneath the covers *without* needing a flashlight. I nevertheless started taking a potassium iodide daily supplement after the Three Mile Island nuclear "accident", which occurred not all that far from where I was living at the time.
And of course since then, we've had Chernobyl and Fukushima. This March 20th, at 7:42am EST, I'll turn 68 ... and my doctor tells me that except for my bad knees, my internals are as healthy as those of a 35 year old. So, Thanks *So* Much, Ancestors. I'm surprised none of you were French, inasmuch the city of Autun was built directly over a massive natural deposit of *Autunite* ... which is considered to be the richest variety of ... *Uranium ore on the planet.*
I guess you could say they were painted in a bad light.
Neverland Nights no. But yes
Ha ha ha ha
I'm going to hell for upvoting that
Stop that
*badum-tsss*
Simon, I know this video was posted a while ago. However, I would like to share my story. In the grand ol US of A, we use Lead Chromate as a road pigment. We now know lead is highly carcinogenic. During that time we had no idea. The pots the Thermoplastics were being melted in was really hot(400F). During the winter time, we would pop open the tops of the pots and enjoy the heat. I had no clue Lead Chromate was in the thermoplastic substance being boiled. We inhaled the fumes to keep worm. Sadly, I feel I am going to live a short life because of this. The company I worked for will plead ignorance.
Hey my baby, how she glow! It ain't syphilis, she ain't no Ho! A dose or two of radium makes her show, with a pleasant look of green flame glow!
nothing like a green flame glow blow, huh?
And yet despite this infamous case, there are still people who insist that having calcium in your diet doesn't actually improve bone health.
Despite radium killing people so thoroughly precisely because the body mistakes it for calcium.
And the bones continued to glow after death proving that the new "calcium" did indeed end up in the bones
it would be good they said, it would be healthy they said...
I want to pay respect by saying R.I.P to the 5 brave Radium Girls. They should get recognitions every March for the part they played in Women's history.
If you find this topic interesting, and you like reading fiction, I highly recommend the book, "A Beautiful Poison" by Lydia Kang. It's an indie Whodunnit and one of the main characters is a dial painting "Radium Girl" caught up in a murder mystery.
Is it just me or is this video sped up a little? Simon seems to be talking and moving unusually fast
Salvator Merrifield I noticed it just as I read this comment. Weird.
I noticed too🤔
Simon, have you ever done one on the Abacus. I know they are used for addition and subtraction , but I also understand they can do much more. I and probably others would be interested in a video about the Not so simple Abacus. If you've done one already let me know. I'm still binge watching your 3 channels since I'm a fairly new subscriber. Really love these videos. Thanks.
Guo Wei Yan , yes he does. Top Tenz Net and Visual Politck. More really great stuff by my favourite narrator Simon Whistler. Check them out I'm sure they would appreciate it. 🤝
I've never seen so many Nobel prizes in a single video. Actually in a single family!
"The Radium Girls" by Kate Moore is an excellent read.
And if you think about it, we no longer use Radium to light stuff up, we use silicon, as in light emitting diodes or LED's. And we're back to pocket watches - our mobile devices used LED's to light up the screen and keep perfect time.
kd1s for watches and other glow stuff radium is still widely used
Actually radium has not been used at all since the 1960s, and even tritium is rather uncommon.
Speaking of light, if you've got a cheap alarm clock that runs on a single 1.5 V battery, you may still find a tiny lightbulb inside. Inefficient as that may be, it's the only way of using a voltage that low directly without having to resort to DC/DC converters.
Mobile devices only keep perfect time on an Internet connection, where they can sync with an NTP server regularly. Plus getting them out can be rather cumbersome. Conventional wristwatches are anything but dead. Smartwatches are a nice gimmick but I don't see them lasting for decades.
Incidentally, I have been marvelling at the kind of power consumption figures that quartz watches already managed 30+ years ago - we're talking below 1 µA at 1.55 V, and most of that actually going to the mechanics (or LCD). Truly micropower long before that buzzword existed.
Fun fact: they still use the Zinc Sulfide compound for glow in the dark paints. They just don’t add Radium or any other radioactive elements to it. I don’t remember the exact science but Zinc Sulfide is a phosphor.
This video is lit
Get out.
Capt. Bacon *slow claps*
The Amazing Satanist all I'm saying is that this video brightened my day
*slow caps*
If you’re going to say the modern version of “Lit”. Please go away.
And now for another bonus fact.
Yes... waiting!!
While I largely identify as a libertarian, it's stuff like this that make me against the idea of full anarcho-capitalism. Now yes, part of this was caused by government interference and yes, too much government control is just as a bad if not worse, there has to be some standards we hold business too or you will find there's a lot of them that are perfectly willing to pull crap like this.
God, given how easy the fixes were it was almost like they were getting off on the power knowing what there were doing to these power girls.
If it is more profitable for a business to act unethically or form a monopoly or cartel they will do so,that is why regulation is required,businesses only purpose is to make as much profit as possible.
It's the issue about Free market capitalism, cause the people in charge of the businesses are not there for the world's benefit, only their own. (and while you have good people like Bill Gate's around 10% of people who make it up the corporate ladder are literally psychopaths, who lack empathy and and are heartless to the plight of those beneath them)
@@rushxanthemtcg5607 at least they know about ad hominem
We humans are often a despicable lot!
So, I've seen a few comments about wondering what things we might be doing now that we'll look back on like this. I'm a professional scientist, still young enough to retain some optimism (and haven't yet been offered one of those bribes, where can I find one, I'm so underpaid) and I have a few thoughts:
Modern health and safety in the western world now has a healthy respect for hazardous chemicals. To say nothing about how little manufacture we do in the west, regulations and requirements are now sufficiently stringent that workers are not put at risk any more (certainly not in the same way). Unfortunately, there are certain countries in the eastern world (including a particularly large and influential one that I shall decline to name) who are less respectful to their workers. A lot of our electronics comes from the east, and silicon fabrication involves significant amounts of arsenic, fluorine and phosphorus (sidenote, fabrication engineers are mostly men but fabrication technicians are mostly women - take a guess which group handles more dangerous chemicals). Moreover, to extract neodymium - the metal used to make super-strong permanent magnets - and other rare earth metals from mined ore, a lot of radioactive waste is produced, which I don't imagine is being treated with enough respect. I don't suspect anything like as nasty as the Radium Girls' story is happening out there, but I do think we'll look back on our heavy consumption of electronics and tech less than favourably.
Moving away from chemistry to biology and medicine, there are a few ongoing crises. I think the biggest is antibiotic resistance and I think future generations will consider it absurd how doctors and patients abused antibiotics and how research into antibiotics has dried up. A more thorny one is mental health, particularly as knowledge of causes and treatments are still in its adolescence, but I think people will look back on this era like we look back on medicine from 100 years ago. Speaking personally, I think we might also view farming, food consumption and livestock health differently in the future - in the US, in particular, minimal effort and money is spent keeping livestock healthy, with meat being cleaned and treated after slaughter (when animals aren't pumped full of antibiotics). This process is not as effective as raising animals properly, but the general public's appetite for cheap meat has the be met somehow!
By far, the biggest, though, will be global climate change (global warming). This, *absolutely*, is a case where big business is suppressing scientific evidence, paying off a few scientists to disagree with the consensus, then claiming that 'opinion is divided'. Greenhouse gas emissions are still way too high, but despite our metaphorical toolbox being full of technological options to produce greener energy and goods, politicians are sitting on their hands (be sure to vote, folks!). It goes further than greenhouse gases, though, and we're doing huge harm to ecology and biodiversity, driving huge numbers of species to extinction as we build over their habitats, hunt them to extinction and pollute their homes. This, more than anything else, is what I think future generations will judge us for. They'll wonder what the hell we were thinking!
-----------------------------
As a bonus, a few things people were discussing elsewhere in the comments:
Mobile phones are not a health hazard. Simon mentioned 'ionising radiation' in the video - this is when a photon (like an X-ray) has so much energy that, when an electron absorbs it, the electron escapes from the atom. The left over atom is ionised and goes on to have chemical reactions with things (which is usually bad news). However, low energy photons - such as visible light, infrared radiation, microwaves and radio waves - don't have enough energy to ionise anything. What microwaves *can* do, however is make electrons dance. No really, the wave pulls the electrons to one side, then the other, then the other, back and forth about a million times a second. This is what heats up food in a microwave oven - the electrons are basically dancing so fast that (like dancing humans) they get pretty hot. The speed they dance (the frequency of the wave) doesn't affect this process (I mean, it does affect how deep the microwaves penetrate, with higher frequencies penetrating less deep) - it's how vigorously they dance (the *power* of the wave) that matters. If you look on the cooking instructions on some microwaveable food, you might see them giving instructions for different microwave powers - all of these are much, much more powerful than a mobile phone.
Genetically modified food is not an issue. We've been genetically modifying food for thousands of years, it's just we used to call it 'selective breeding' and used it to deform fruits, vegetables and animals so extremely that most commercial cultivars can't survive in the wild any more. As far as I'm concerned, nothing we do in the lab is going to top that.
I don't know too much about fracking. I do know that there have been attempts to start fracking in my country (the UK, in Lancashire) and that tremors have been detected since they started fracking. The key thing, though, which demonstrates my previous point about modern health and safety, is that these tremors were detected by seismometers and were far too weak to be perceived by humans. Nevertheless, regulations state that the company needs to stop their operations and monitor the site for a while before they resume. Honestly, I reckon the locals (who kicked up a fuss when the project was proposed) have had a bigger social, economic and environmental impact than the fracking!
didn't they make radioactive condoms as well?
walking around with lightsabers
Not really, there were condoms that had the NAME Radium on the package, but there was no Radium in(or on)them.
Many products that said Radium on them did not contain any,
Same with X-ray(for example, X-Ray brand stove polish), Electric, magnetic, etc
Any new technology that was poorly understood was used to sell products.
And yes, there WERE Radium containing products on the market as well.
There should be judicial promptness laws that try to run through cases as quickly as possible, within reason of course. Witnesses served notice and penalized for undue delay. Sorry Mr. CEO, but you're going to have to cut that golf outing short, turn the yacht around, and get your ass to court.
radium good shit im sprinking that shit o my cearel rite now [{~~
Wow! That US Radium is awful. How could they do this? Did they not have any conscience at all? That is totally repugnant! I despise the cigarette industry for all the cover up and denying they did but this Radium company makes the cigarette industry almost look good by comparison. That has to be the worst company in modern US history. Thank you for telling their story. This should not ever be forgotten.
Funny how you mentioned the cigarette company in a radium related video. Because cigarettes also contain a radioactive element that was discovered by Marie Curie, yes she discovered polonium (in cigarettes and radium).
The 60fps version is giving me a migraine :/ I always have to remember to change the resolution on these videos.
ancalyme because 30fps is soooooooooo much better?
Yes.
Especially when the movements are sped up.
i HAAAAATE 60fps too sis omg!!! it’s sooooo headachey
"I always knew when I was dating a Radium girl.....they had a certain luminescence about them . Also my pocket geiger counter that I kept in my asbestos overcoat pocket would go ape shit !!!"
Simon:" So I really hope you enjoyed that video"
me:*sobbing* great... great video
This makes me so mad and I'm not even close to that generation 😡😩
De ja vous. This is almost an exact copy of the Valdez oil spill and Exxon's non-stop, fierce legal delays and resistance to paying the fines and damages levied against them. I live in the area of the spill and many people died long before they received their pennies on the dollar (or less) compensation for having their multi-generational fishing livelihoods (and sometimes their houses and families) ripped from them by the spill. There should be an especially brutal form of prison sentence, one that does not culminate in death, for executives like this. Enron, Bernie Madof, etc. should all spend the rest of their natural lives begging for death to escape the just horrible punishment that should be levied on monsters like these people.
It's Matt You mean déjà-vu
You're right. How embarrassing! And I took French for 4 years! (Before I finally passed it once)
It's hard to argue with that.
I’ll sleep easy tonight knowing the heads of this company are burning in hell.
Match sticks maker and watch face painters. 2 worst jobs in history.
The match stick women also pioneered labour unions. I'm sensing a theme.
Don't madhatters get a look in?
My grandmother worked in the Orange NJ facility. She passed from radium poisoning after suffering terribly for years
A perfect case of how business behaves in the absence of "Government Regulations."
Funny, I heard this story years and years ago but I heard it was timex where they worked.....
Another fun fact: You used to be able to buy a kid's chemistry set that used to come with a piece of uranium....and yes, it was radioactive and extremely dangerous.
I was in a play about this. I played the paint's inventor Dr. Von Sochocky.
Griffin Watson OMG me too! It's a super interesting play, the author even came to give us a work shop.
The Seven Year Twitch dude lucky!! We did it too. I was the Reporter :)
Me too. I played a factory girl, reporter, One of the corporate radium company workers daughter, and a member of the public
This is just sickening. Greed is a disgusting monster.
"I hope you enjoyed the video."
Ya. I am in a wonderful mood now. :l
Maria Curie Skłodowska -poland
Polen.Polska.
Nobel poland. M Curie Skłodowska
Sure-fire way to win a Nobel - Get born in the Curie family.
And then do amazing things.
If anyone is interested in learning more about these women and what they went thru, I'd like to recommend The Radium Girls by Kate Moore. An excellent read!
I remember watching an episode about this on Science Channel years ago called “Dark Matters: Twisted But True”.
wow, @ 7:00 .. kinda makes you wonder about our "modern" world of technology .. I think the faster we evolve to cybernetic organisms (sentient robots) the better. Being organic is all fun and games until somebody dies ... then we have a funeral and everybody's so heartbroken, "why oh why ... she was only 99 years old - oh the horror" - and then somebody dies because of a tooth infection - the stuff you use to chew up organic material in order to stay alive ... oxygen kills us; gawd it's a miracle that our species have survived this far.... but the moment we strive for transhumanism some folks can't deal with it .. "it's a slap in God's face - we try to be God, and we will all die by His wrath .." ... face-desk (we all die inevitably, whether it is by the hand of some deity - or by the hand of your wife stabbing you 37 times -because you forgot the toilet-seat up (apparently she's too darn lazy to lower it herself at night) .... we are doomed anyway.. "Organic life" is too fragile for human ambition, it's about time we upgrade.
That U.S. Radium company is very similar to the egg industry. Paying researchers to summit false results in their studies.
What the fuck did the egg industry do?
Her, Simon. Why don't you find out why Louisiana is the only US state that has parishes, while all others have counties.
Word Unheard Maybe it's because Louisiana was a French Territory? Do they have parishes in France? I'd like to know.
I feel bad for the girls and the justice system...
It looks like the justice system failed the girls though.
Quite disturbing the attempted spin but all to common. "We hired people unfit for work such as cripples and this act of kindness was turned against us", mighty low isn't it? Never underestimate how filthy, self-serving and cruel people can be, even in most trusted and respectable organizations. They always want to tell people it's all good and everyone is fine, until it's too late and the people who follow them can feign ignorance. The people, often minorities and the poor, always pay the highest cost.
How does tab for a cause work?
Just a browser plugin that changes your new tab page into one that runs ads. The revenue from those ads goes to charitable organizations.
Flintstoned
Thanks so much for your time!
I... also paint... And it is a fact that twisting ur brush helps the brush form a point for better detailing but... I never thought about using my mouth for that?? Damn, they basically didn't care about the health of these girls, how unfortunate and grotesque.
Dude. They may have been referred to as “girls” back then but continuing to call them that in your video, except when quoting from original materials, is rude and patronising. They should always be referred to as women.
Peter Epp omg chill bro.