No one knew it at the time but it was also highly toxic. Saw a documentary on the company named in the article. Most all the workers there were women and a large majority of them lived short lives and died of cancer.
Radium Girls.
They would lick the radium paintbrush to moisten it and bring it to a finer point with their lips. They would also adorn themselves with radium paint for date night.
“Radium glows in the dark...”
Radiation, by itself, emitted by radioactive materials is not visible to the human eye. However, there are ways to “convert” this invisible energy to visible light. Many substances will emit visible light if “stimulated” by the ionizing radiation from radioactive material. These materials are known as “fluors” or “scintilators.” So, by mixing some radioactive material with such a fluor, you can make a substance that glows. This kind of material has been used in things like the faces of clocks, watches, and instruments on ships and airplanes to make them visible in the dark. But not foxes as they don’t contain the fluors (lumifluors) like polyphenyl hydrocarbons, oxazole and oxadiazole aryls in proper quantities.
Alpha and Beta radiation devices used by the military can detect it like the anpdr’s or pac 1S devices. But as it doesn’t glow it has to be hunted for. A majority of it is alpha and it generally is in the dust in the air or on the ground.
And if you are close enough to absorb gamma, you’re going to die fairly rapidly of radiation poisoning as you’ll get your 200 rads from being that close. But so would the foxes. And as their body mass is much smaller than a human, they would go quicker more like hours after saturation at best. And if the radiation doesn’t get them, the solutions used to transport the radiation will. Organic solutions are produced by dissolving an organic scintillator in a solvent. There were no non toxic solvents, only less than others so the 1940 foxes were in dire straits.
rwood