RADIUM

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 413, 23 December 1932, Page 7

RADIUM

DEADLY POISON beadly power that liyes on. dead bodies SAW FATE IN MIRROR London, Saturday Conjuring up more mysteriously gruesome possibilities than are to be encountered in -any crime "thriller" Lord Lee, of Fareham, chairman of the National Radium Commission, told the British Institute of Radiology last night that radium was a dangerous poisdn — twenty times stronger than tetanus toxin, which was the deadliest now known. "I cite terrible facts," he said, "in order to emphasise the yital necessity for public control of its use." . An amount equal to a pinch of salt, he said would be sufficient to murder a neighbour sleeping on the other side of the wall of a semi-de-tached house without arousing suspicions. Lord Lee condemned the Westminster Hospital's experiment in radio therapy as disastrous. "Frankly," he said, "I don't know whether it can cure cancer or other malignant disease, though certainly it can relieve pain if properly ap«plied. Nevertheless, no surgeon is competent to practice radiotherapy without intensive special training. "Scientists are often like sportsmen — more interested in the gun than in the quarry — and the pursuit of science may become too costly in terms of human life." The public he declared, should beware. of radio active waters and similar preparations.

New Jersey Horror Lord Lee, then recalled the New Jersey "dial painters"i case involving the death of many girls who _ had absorbed infinitesimalss quantities of radium while painting the luminous dials of watches. This absorption had resulted in an internal bombardment by "alpha" particles — the most potent destructive agent known to science — which would continue within their skeletons for at least 1700 years. The sufferers had emmitted radiations which were visible during life, one learning her fate when she saw a phosphorescent reflection of herself in a mirror. The radiations were so powerful said Lord Lee, that in a galvanometer experiment with the powdered bone of a victim five years after her death they had produced a static-like shriek. A number of girls employed by a large watchmaking firm, who were (lying lingering and agonising deaths from radium p'oisoning, were awarded substantial sumss in compensation for their ineapacity. Some died while the case was in progress and| others were too far gone for the money to be of any use to them.