![]() ![]() This was the reason for litigation against US Radium by the so-called Radium girls. Radium jaw (Radium necrosis), was allegedly known and initially denied by US Radium's management and scientists working for the company. The ingestion of the paint by the women, brought about while licking the brushes, resulted in a condition called radium jaw, a painful swelling and porosity of the upper and lower jaws, and ultimately led to the deaths of many of these women. Unbeknownst to the women, the product was highly radioactive and therefore, carcinogenic. Workers had been instructed to "point" the brushes by licking them with their mouths. The luminescent paint used by the women, a product called Undark, had radium as its main ingredient. ![]() A successor company, Isolite, still produces luminous signs using tritium. After the 1970s, the company called itself the Safety Light Corporation, a reference to glow-in-the-dark safety signs, dials and other luminous paint products the company produced. The company then moved to Orange in 1917 and four years later opened its doors as United States Radium Corporation in 1921. The company produced uranium from carnotite ore and eventually moved into the business of producing radioluminescent paint. ![]() Willis, and was originally called the Radium Luminous Material Corporation. His illness garnered much publicity, with The Wall Street Journal running a story titled "The Radium Water Worked Fine until His Jaw Came Off", and brought the problem of radioactive quack medicines into the public eye.The company was founded in 1914 in Newark, New Jersey by Dr. The disease was the main reason for litigation against the United States Radium Corporation by the so-called Radium Girls.Īnother prominent example of this condition was the death of Eben Byers, an American industrialist, after taking large doses of a patent medicine containing radium over several years. Symptoms were present in the mouth due to use of the lips and tongue, to keep the radium-paint paintbrushes properly shaped. Martland in 1924 to be symptomatic of radium paint ingestion, after many female workers from various radium paint companies reported similar dental and mandibular pain. Theodor Blum (1924), who described an unusual mandibular osteomyelitis in a dial painter, a condition he called "radium jaw". ![]() The first written reference to the disease was by a dentist, Dr. The condition is similar to phossy jaw, an osteoporitic and osteonecrotic illness of matchgirls, brought on by phosphorus ingestion and absorption. The symptoms are necrosis of the mandible (lower jawbone) and the maxilla (upper jaw) as well as constant bleeding of the gums and (usually) after some time, severe distortion due to bone tumours and porosity of the lower jaw. Radium jaw is an occupational disease brought on by the ingestion and subsequent absorption of radium into the bones of radium dial painters and those consuming radium-laden patent medicines. ![]()
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