Radium

Radium Girls

Radium is a radioactive substance found in nature that can have adverse health effects under certain conditions. How was Radium commonly used? At the beginning of the 20th century, Radium was thought to have beneficial health properties and was often added to consumer products such as toothpaste, hair creams, and even food. Radium was discovered by Nobel laureate Marie Curie and her husband Pierre in 1898. It was quickly put to use as a cancer treatment. The color purple: How an accidental discovery changed fashion. Today, the Royal Society of Chemistry says there's really only one use for radium — targeted cancer treatments, because it's so good at killing cells. It was first discovered in 1898 by Marie and Pierre Curie, after they extracted a single milligram from ten tons of a uranium ore called pitchblende. And it was pretty darn cool.

Chemical properties of radium - Health effects of radium - Environmental effects of radium

88
Atomic mass	226.0254 g.mol^-1
Electronegativity according to Pauling	0.9
Density	5 g.cm^-3 at 20°C
Melting point	700 °C
Boiling point	1140 °C
Vanderwaals radius	0.230 nm
Ionic radius	unknown
Isotopes	6
Electronic shell	[ Rn ] 7s²
Energy of first ionisation	509.1 kJ.mol^-1
Energy of second ionisation	975 kJ.mol^-1
Discovered by	Pierre and Marie Curie 1898

Radium

Radium is silvery, lustrous, soft, intensely radioactive. It readily oxidizes on exposure to air, turning from almost pure white to black. Radium is luminescent, corrodes in water to form radium hydroxide. Although is the heaviest member of the alkaline-earth group it is the most volatile.

Applications

Radium is used in luminous paint (in the form of radium bromide). Radium and beryllium were once used as a portable source of neutrons. Radium is used in medicine to produce radon gas, used for cancer treatment. At the beginning of the 19th century radium was used as additive in products like toothpaste, hair creams and even food items.

Radium in the environment

It has been estimated that each square kilometer of the earth surface (to a depth of 40 cm) contains 1 gram of radium. Early in the twentieth century radium was extracted from uranium ores for use in luminous dials and medical treatment. The amount of radium in uranium ores varies between 150 and 350 mg/ton. The most in contained in the ores of Zaire and Canada.

Health effects of radium

Radium is naturally present in the environment in very small amounts. Because of that we are always exposed to radium and to small amounts of radiation that it releases into the environment.
Radium levels in the environment have greatly increased as a result of human activity. Humans release radium into the environment by burning coal and other fuels. Radium levels in drinking water may be high when it is extracted from deep wells that are located near radioactive waste disposal sites.
Currently there is no information available on the amounts of radium in air and soil.
There is no evidence that exposure to naturally present levels of radium has harmful effects on human health. However, exposure to higher levels of radium may result in health effects, such as teeth fracture, anaemia and cataract. When the exposure lasts for a long period of time radium may even cause cancer and the exposure can eventually lead to death. These effects may take years to develop. They are usually caused by gamma radiation of radium, which is able to travel fairly long distances through air. Therefore contact with radium is not necessary, for radium to cause health effects.

Environmental effects of radium

Radium is constantly produced by the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. Radium is present at very low levels in rocks and soil and strongly attaches to those materials. It is also found in air. High concentrations of radium exist in water on some locations.
Uranium mining results in higher levels of radium in water near uranium mines. Plants absorb radium from the soil. Animals that eat these plants will accumulate radium.
Finally, radium may concentrate in fish and other aquatic organisms and bio magnify up the food chain.

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Radium is a highly radioactive chemical element classified among the alkaline earth metals of the periodic table of elements. This element has several research uses, and historically it was used in a wide range of industries. Before the realization that radiation was harmful, radium was actually used as a health additive in personal care products, and its inclusion was an advertising point to make these products appeal to consumers. Unfortunately, numerous radiation-related deaths occurred before the scientific community realized that radium and other radioactive elements posed a health threat.

Radium is found in trace amounts in uranium ore, and it is significantly more radioactive than uranium, a well known element due to its use in atomic weapons. This element is the heaviest of the alkaline earths, and when it is isolated, it proves to be a pure white metal which demonstrates luminescence in the dark. Radium reacts quickly with the air, turning black when it is exposed, and it also interacts with the containers it is stored in, making it difficult to safely handle. The element has an atomic number of 88, and it is identified with the symbol Ra on the periodic table of elements.

The discovery of radium is credited to Marie Curie and her husband Pierre, who discovered radium and polonium while researching uranium in Curie's native Poland in the 1880s. By 1911, Curie had successfully isolated the element, after receiving the Nobel Prize in 1903 for her work; she received another in 1911 for her isolation of radium. Curie was a truly remarkable women for the time in which she worked; she was an accomplished chemist and physicist, and her contributions to the sciences are honored by the element curium and the Curie, a unit of radiation.

Curie named the element radium for the Latin radius, or “ray,” in a reference to the element's radioactive properties. Commercially, the element was used in a wide range of luminescent products, especially paints, until the scientific community realized that these uses were dangerous. During the period of time in which radium was used commercially, numerous workers got sick as a result of their exposure, and some lobbied for better worker protections in the hopes of preventing more cases of work-related illnesses in the future.

Radium Girls

In research, radium is used as a source of neutrons in laboratories, and it is also researched by scientists who are interested in learning more about it and its isotopes. Radium is also sometimes used in treatment for cancers and in medical imaging. Some antiques like watches with luminescent dials contain radium, a testimony to the element's once widespread commercial use.