
How We Realized Putting Radium in Everything Was Not the Answer (2013) - Hooke
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/03/how-we-realized-putting-radium-in-everything-was-not-the-answer/273780/?single_page=true
======
FrozenVoid
Make one wonder if some things we use are the 'radium' of the future, and we
don't think of it as harmful now. Recalled products and bans are just the tip
of the icebergs: what if something harms us in non-"cancer in 4 years if you
drink radium" way, but alters the genes or reduce our health in other
ways(think xenoestrogens)? What if the harm isn't realized in everyone(e.g.
only 4% of people)?

Its not profitable for radiumCo to be preemptively pro-consumer, their only
consumer-centric concern is PR/reputation after the fact, so until they get
publicly shamed they won't stop selling their radium. If they have no
competition eager to take them down, they have even less concern of what
consumers think since radiumCo has stable market.

~~~
soperj
I think all of the nano stuff will be in this bubble. Just thinking about
disposing of stuff that has graphene and carbon nano tubes in it. There's no
regulation at the current time, and this is definitely something that we can
ingest, how will our body(or any animal body) deal with it? Could be fine, but
do we really know?

~~~
jwdunne
If you look up how asbestos damages the lungs, perhaps carbon nanotubes are
something we wouldn't want to ingest.

I can't say the effects would be remotely similar but:

\- asbestos was considered safe (or some type of it). Used in pretty much
everything.

\- broken / agitated asbestos releases microscopic fibres into the air

\- those fibres pierce the lining of the lungs leading to asbestosis and
eventually a mesothelioma, a cancer with 0% chance of survival. This takes
some time to present.

\- took decades to realise what was going on and decades more to eliminate the
problem, with many lives lost in the process.

I wonder if carbon nanotubes could damage in a similar damage over such a long
timespan such that it takes decades to fully realise, regulate and eventually
fix. After all, my garage roof is asbestos. Coincidentally, my grandfather
died before I was born due to long term asbestos exposure.

~~~
tossa
The occupational hazards of working with carbon composites are already known
to closely resemble those of asbestos.

This is especially true for smaller scale operations utilizing hand layup and
generally requiring more raw material handling and abrasive finishing steps.

------
npstr
We all laugh at this nowadays, but 100 years later, Radium (or rather Radon, a
radioactive gas) is still being used nowadays.

I once stumbled on homoeopathic advice to visit a radon cave. While I don't
have the original site or link at hand, googling will lead you to sites like
this:

[http://www.gastein.com/en/radon-therapy-
austria](http://www.gastein.com/en/radon-therapy-austria)

I have no words for this.

~~~
danbruc
Some time ago I read that no radiation exposure might actually be worse for
organisms than low radiation exposure like background radiation. We know the
effects of high doses and everyone just assumed that the negative effects go
to zero as the dose goes to zero and extrapolated it this way from high doses
to zero while in reality there might be a very different relation at low
doses. I will try to find some sources, I am no longer sure how convincing the
argument was.

This does not really change the fact that there seems to be no good evidence
that walking around in a cave with elevated Radon levels does any good, but it
would be less obviously a bad idea if what I mentioned above has any merits.

EDIT: Found it, it is called radiation hormesis [1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis)

~~~
TheGRS
I think what you're getting at is the old adage of doing things in moderation.
Little bit of alcohol seems to have more positive effects than none at all,
severely negative effects when overdone. Same with many drugs, foods and types
of exercises.

The one that really comes to mind for me is bacteria. The idea of probiotics
is still pretty new to the public. Probably not a great idea to ingest a ton
of bacteria all the time, but a little bit can be super beneficial, and much
more beneficial than none.

------
Analemma_
I found a scan of the famous Wall Street Journal article about the unfortunate
fellow whose jaw fell off: [https://www.scribd.com/document/188172930/The-
Radium-Water-W...](https://www.scribd.com/document/188172930/The-Radium-Water-
Worked-Fine-Until-His-Jaw-Fell-Off)

~~~
bbitmaster
Any idea the year this was published? I don't see a date, and I googled the
title and found several references (even on wikipedia) without a date
mentioned.

~~~
kahirsch
1 August 1990

------
hinkley
I'm always curious what the voices of caution were at times like this. Was
there anyone demanding more study before we put radium in everything?

~~~
thaumasiotes
I "recently" (several years ago) read the original Conan stories and the
Wizard of Oz books (there are many).

One thing that leapt out at me was how they both talked about radium. The
cultural view of it at the time was radically different. Radium was a source
of health and magic, capable of solving any problem. There was a passage in
which the protagonists encountered a mysterious phenomenon, and "logically"
concluded "this must be done with radium".

These are fantasy stories, but their similar ideas about what radium was
("magic") and what it was good for ("everything") had to come from somewhere,
and had to be acceptable to their anticipated audience.

To me in the 21st century, it was obviously insane, since radioactivity is
best known for ruthlessly murdering anyone in proximity. There's culture shock
for you. :/

~~~
JuliusKaiser
Sounds like how many people talk about Marijuana today.

------
mxfh
Truly worth watching: _Radium City_ the story of the mentioned _Radium Girls_
of Ottawa, Ill

[http://articles.latimes.com/1988-01-09/entertainment/ca-8748...](http://articles.latimes.com/1988-01-09/entertainment/ca-8748_1_radium-
city)

[https://vimeo.com/ondemand/radiumcity/166116025](https://vimeo.com/ondemand/radiumcity/166116025)

------
King-Aaron
Another interesting thing to look into is the Shoe-Fitting Fluoroscope
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-
fitting_fluoroscope](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope)).
Basically a box you put your feet in, with an x-ray gun at the bottom and a
hole to put your face over at the top.

Spoiler alert, it didn't end well for anyone.

------
janci
I see a pattern here - something is discovered, then it's seen as a magic
solution to many many problems until devastating health issues are discovered.

Rontgen, radium, asbestos. PVC, carbon fiber, nanotubes are promising
candidates for the list. Non-ionising radiation (phones, wifi, radio
communication) is omnipresent and I really hope it will not follow the
pattern.

~~~
mercer
Can anyone 'in the know' explain to a layman why the parent comment is no
reason for concern (especially when it comes to 'non-ionising radiation'?)

------
phosphorhesper
Yeah, I've run into a lot of performance bottlenecks using Radium in all of
the React components in a large, complex web app.

------
gitpusher
Flash forward to 2100: How We Realized Filling Our Bodies with Millions of
Nanobots Was Not The Answer

------
du_bing
Wow, this is interesting history!

------
endymi0n
How We Realized Putting Blockchain in Everything Was Not the Answer (2020)

~~~
jes5199
I'm thinking in a hundred years it will be "How We Realized Putting
Microprocessors in Everything Was Not the Answer"

~~~
sand500
Let me guess, security vulnerabilities in literally every object.

~~~
tbrake
Can't recall if I read it here or on twitter but there was a great quote along
that line : "The 'S' in IoT stands for 'Security'"

------
afdsadf
How we realized putting WiFi in everything was not the answer (2018)

------
mattkevan
How we realised putting machine learning in everything was not the answer
(2117)

------
kwhitefoot
Did anyone ever believe such a thing?

~~~
lstyls
RTFA:

> _The glowing element was hailed as a panacea for everything from blindness
> to hysteria._

Literally the second paragraph.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Hailed by whom?

That sentence is immediately followed by:

> "No medicine, no drugs," raves one ad

Note the word ad.

So most of the hailing, possibly all, was in advertising copy.

The article mentions advertising and marketing several times but makes no
convincing case that those without a financial interest in selling the goods
believed the claims.

And quite likely most of those selling the products didn't believe them
either; many were just the latest in a long line of quacks selling snake oil
and neither knew nor cared if it worked or not, it was just a cool name to
attach to product.

~~~
lstyls
Your comment was, __" Did anyone ever believe such a thing?" __

Again, from the article:

> __One particularly disturbing medical innovation was the "Radiendocrinator,"
> a device the size of a thick stack of credit cards to be worn with an
> adaptor "like any 'athletic strap.'" Its inventor, who fervently claimed to
> use the product, later died of bladder cancer. __

The inventor used the product, and presumably so did the poor people consuming
the quack products. Prevarication doesn 't change the logic here.

