
How We Realized Putting Radium in Everything Was Not the Answer - ajna91
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/how-we-realized-putting-radium-in-everything-was-not-the-answer/273780/
======
smacktoward
If you are interested in this subject, I highly recommend picking up a copy of
Deborah Blum’s excellent 2011 book _The Poisoner’s Handbook_
([https://www.amazon.com/Poisoners-Handbook-Murder-Forensic-
Me...](https://www.amazon.com/Poisoners-Handbook-Murder-Forensic-
Medicine/dp/014311882X)), which tells the stories of a bunch of different
chemical catastrophes from the same period. Radium is covered, as well as such
other “what were they thinking?” stories as the introduction of lead into
gasoline and the poisoning of industrial alcohol by the government during
Prohibition in a misguided effort to keep it from being turned into bootleg
liquor. It’s full of fascinating case studies, and Blum has an engaging
writing style that makes it a good read.

If you prefer to watch your history, PBS’ _American Experience_ documentary
series did an episode based on Blum’s book (see
[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poisoners](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/poisoners)
); it can be streamed via a bunch of different video services.

~~~
th0ma5
We still poison alcohol not only for prohibition reasons but also tax reasons.

~~~
tialaramex
In the EU at least the denatured alcohols sold to the general public (e.g. as
cleaning products) don't have enough actual poison in them to cause much
damage.

The main thing they shove in there to stop you drinking it is denatonium
benzoate ("bitrex"), which will make you _regret_ putting it in your mouth,
but won't kill you because you'll immediately want to spit it out instead. The
other ingredients are mostly to stop you trying to get the bitrex back out and
then selling it as bootleg booze (thus evading the tax).

~~~
jmkni
I think Nintendo coat Switch cartridges with the same thing, to prevent kids
from putting the tiny cartridges in their mouth.

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rootsudo
If you go to the Wikipedia Article for Radium Girls:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls)
\- You'd see it's an exact mirror of much of the text that's _re_ posted on
theatlantic.com article.

~~~
dehrmann
I did, and I searched for several random 4-6 word phrases in the Atlantic
article from the Wikipedia one, and I didn't find anything making it obvious
much of the content is an exact mirror.

~~~
forgotmypwd123
Its lazily reworded, still plaigarism

~~~
dehrmann
> ...an exact mirror...

It might be lazily reworded, but hyperbole like that hurts the commenter's
credibility and makes me less likely to believe them.

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jupp0r
When you think people had learned their lesson by the 1930s, don't forget
about watching atomic bomb tests from the side of the road in Nevada in the
50s: [https://allthatsinteresting.com/atomic-
tourism](https://allthatsinteresting.com/atomic-tourism)

~~~
djtriptych
If totally do it if it were even close to safe. Is a small yield blast
dangerous from 75 miles?

~~~
arethuza
You can use Nukemap to work that out:

[https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/)

I think it would be perfectly safe - though you probably don't want to live
directly downwind:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downwinders](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downwinders)

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m463
Makes me think that regulation moves very slowly.

~~~
microcolonel
It moves slowly in both directions. If everything had built-in sunset
provisions, it would be a lot easier to try things.

~~~
Retric
That seems like a terrible idea because people forget why useful regulations
where needed.

Lead is never going to be safe. _Julius Caesar 's engineer, Vitruvius,
reported, "water is much more wholesome from earthenware pipes than from lead
pipes.“_ _Lead was added to cheap wine illegally in the 18th and early 19th
centuries as a sweetener._. Note the illegal bit because we knew it was toxic.

But fast forward and... _In the late 1950s through the 1970s Herbert Needleman
and Clair Cameron Patterson did research trying to prove lead 's toxicity to
humans.[231] In the 1980s Needleman was falsely accused of scientific
misconduct by the lead industry associates.[232][233]_

Read the history and we just keep discovering the same issues over and over
again.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning)
Yet, we still keep adding it to various products today and people still get
significant exposure.

~~~
microcolonel
> _That seems like a terrible idea because people forget why useful
> regulations were needed._

To me that seems to indicate that we need to keep a record of why laws are
made, so that the case is simply ready to be made when the sun is due to set.

~~~
thaumasiotes
> To me that seems to indicate that we need to keep a record of why laws are
> made

Whether and why a practice is useful generally has little or nothing to do
with people's understanding of whether and why it is useful. The arguments
people advance for everything, including valuable things, are almost uniformly
nonsense and easy to disprove.

So, a record of why laws are made wouldn't really serve any purpose.

~~~
stuaxo
Laws should be measured against the reasons they were created.

~~~
thaumasiotes
If you start doing a good thing for a bad reason, you should stop?

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spraak
Reminds me of the gleeful use of DDT as well. It's a common pattern.

~~~
crdotson
Probably a bad example. A lot more people died from malaria than would ever
have been harmed by DDT.

~~~
User23
Most people have no idea malaria was endemic in the USA as far north as New
York State. The advantage of the DDT saturation was that it wiped out the
disease reservoir completely, precisely because it persisted in the
environment. Modern "responsible" DDT usage (treated nets, wall spraying, etc)
is just breeding resistant mosquitoes.

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fenglida
How long until will it be until we find out the effects of 5G radiation?

The real point of my question is not to raise conspiracy theories about 5G,
but to illustrate a point. Our regulatory organisations operate under a “let’s
do it and ban it later if some people die” kind of attitude.

~~~
solveit
It's just you.

Things have changed enormously from the "let's put radium in everything" era.
Nowadays there's a good case to be made that we've swung too far in the
opposite direction and we're letting people die because the FDA is too
conservative in approving new medications (and old Russian medications with a
proven track record that's impossible to patent therefore nobody has the
incentive to spend millions on getting through the FDA vetting process, but
that's a different issue).

~~~
latchkey
The whole anti-vax movement. There is bad things in the vaccinations that are
saving us!

~~~
skocznymroczny
How do you verify the content of a vaccine? It's not much different to using
proprietary software. Yes, it seems to be good for us, but can you trust it
fully without being able to verify it's contents and confirm that it wasn't
tampered with along the way?

~~~
krapp
It's not reasonable to expect every individual to have the time, resources or
expertise to personally run a full chemical analysis on every dose of vaccine
or medicine that enters their body.

So... you don't. You don't verify it, because you can't. You can't verify all
of science from first principles. You can't inspect every building you enter
and verify that it meets code. You can't inspect every electronic device for
NSA taps. You can't inspect all of your food, drinking water, or even all of
the FOSS code you use. Society is too large, and the domains of knowledge and
expertise that feed into it are too complex for any individual to fully
comprehend.

You can't eliminate risk or trust from life. As far as vaccines go, you just
have to trust that they work and are not likely to be poison and take the
shot.

