Antonios Theodosis - Radium Craze in Los Angeles During the Early Twentieth Century

 Radium Craze in Los Angeles during the Early Twentieth Century 

In the early twentieth century, a new buzz was quickly growing around Los Angeles with the discovery of an element that would glow in the dark and could be found naturally in the environment. The element in question was none other than radium, the eighty-eighth element in the periodic table was something fresh, hot, and exciting in all aspects of the early 1900s. As a result of this fresh excitement, the element could be found in numerous consumer products, medicinal practices, and in areas of congregation around the city of Los Angeles. Its exciting glow and mystery that surrounded it intrigued scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs, and the general public in what can only be deemed as an era of the “radium craze.” This infatuation and mystery surrounding this radioactive element was not a good thing, however, because as noted, it was infused in everyday consumer products, in medicinal products, and procedures which were slowly but surely irradiating the people of Los Angeles and poisoning them. It is therefore important to highlight how the radium craze ended up incorporating radium into everyday life and the long-term effects that radium had on people’s health during this time period. 

Sources:

For my research, I mainly focused on newspaper articles from the time period that were available through the library of congress website, government websites such as epa.gov which provided some helpful information on the health effects of radium itself, and also journal articles from Jstor.org and other secondary source websites that provided detailed information on certain radioactive products available during the time period. All of these sources provide different levels of information in their own way but ultimately propound the same notion essentially, that in all of the excitement and buzz surrounding radium, the general public and even those in the field of science did not fully understand the dangers associated with the substance. There was so much marketing and excitement associated with the radium craze during the time period that any form of quackery was gobbled up by the public and eager entrepreneurs looking to capitalize on the new craze did so without hesitation.

Historical Analysis: 

The story of the radium craze can first be attributed to its discovery when in 1898, Marie Curie and Pierre Curie extracted radium from pitchblende, a culmination of different metals in rocks naturally occurring in the environment. Upon the radium’s extraction and close observation, the Curie’s noted that the radium had a distinct glow in the area surrounding it. They also observed that it had not yet been discovered up to that point and had not been a part of the periodic table. The discovery of radium by the Curie’s sets the precedent for the radium craze in the thirty years that followed as clearly this had been an element that even professional scientists knew next to nothing about. The Curie’s had to try a process of chemical extraction from ten rocks just to get one milligram of the radium, which during that time period was extremely difficult to do with the resources at hand so up to that point nobody had really handled radium up close nor observed both the long term and short term effects. This was an element that emitted its own beautiful form of light and came naturally from the Earth, something that seemed to play into the thought process of those surrounded by the craze in the ensuing years that followed its discovery. 

By the early 1900s, only a handful of years after its discovery, radium was making its way into products from all over the consumer spectrum in Los Angeles. There was a buzz surrounding radium with scientists stating that it “produced life” which caught the attention of the public and led both entrepreneurs and medical professionals alike to push toward using it in their treatments and products. One doctor in an interview with the Los Angeles Herald in 1909 stated that radium could allow one to “see-through” things essentially like an x-ray and that it could potentially be used to treat and combat diseases in the medical field. Along with this, products that were infused with radium were selling swiftly such as the “Radium Emanator” produced by Los Angeles-based company “Radium Life inc.” The purpose of the product was to irradiate drinking water overnight so that by morning time the members within the household could have a nice “healthy dose” of irradiated water. These emmanators were sold by doctors to their patients during this time period as they also knew no better than the average layperson about the dangers of radium at this time and fell victim to the crazy claims made about radium during the period as well. There were also other products on the market during this period that also incorporated the use of radium such as cookware, hair products, and even a radium hot spring bathhouse located on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles during the craze. Radium was being incorporated into all walks of life and was becoming a staple part of everyday life.  

The use of radium was so popular during this time period that people even took to visiting hospitals to be treated with the wonder substance and also even tried to make way with stealing it due to its extremely high value. One such example can be seen in an article from the Los Angeles Herald which states that a patient upon finding out he was being treated with radium, made off with 120$ worth of the substance from the hospital and was wanted by police. This showed two things, the first being that radium clearly was a very hot commodity in Los Angeles during this time period and people were willing to commit crimes just to get small vials of it, and the second is that radium was actively being used in the medical field quite regularly even treating small ailments such as ones involving the nose. During this time period the best way to get the radium was through the extraction of the pitchblende found in wells and riverbeds, as they contained the highest concentration of radium available. It would then have to be chemically extracted from the pitchblende and then collected, but ten rocks only produced one milligram of the substance which rendered it quite expensive. It is suggested that one gram of radium during this time period was equivalent to one hundred thousand dollars in today’s money which undoubtedly highlights the difficulty in extracting it, but also the demand for this new “life producing” element. 

While all of these products and medical treatments were so hot during this time period, what the people of Los Angeles didn't know was that they were slowly being poisoned by the radiation coming from the radium they were consuming. The EPA states that chronic exposure to radium can lead to bone, liver, and breast cancer and that it is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the country. A study by the American Cancer Research Association provides some correlation to an increase in cancer rates during the radium craze as the study shows an increase in the cancer rates in major American cities by over twenty-five percent from the late 1800s to the 1910s and may lend credence to the fact that the radium incorporated in these products and practices may have led to these increased rates of cancer during this time period. Along with this, people would get what was known as “radium jaw” a condition affecting the structural integrity of the jaw which would first lead to swelling and then the ultimate collapse of the jaw altogether. The radium would latch itself onto bone and implant itself in there, slowly deteriorating the surrounding tissue. These diseases can all be attributed to the influx of radium-infused products and medical procedures in these medical treatments and the consumption of products such as water especially those that were infused with radium were poisoning the people of Los Angeles with dangerous amounts of radiation on a daily basis. Furthermore, the radium’s deadly radioactive properties would remain in effect even years after its consumption as the half-life of the substance is 1600 years according to nist.gov. The irresponsible uses of radium in the products and medical practices used in Los Angeles during the time period led to the deaths of many people due to the implications radium had on their bodies from said products and procedures. 

Image Analysis: 

This is an image of the naturally occurring radium which can be mainly found in the wells and riverbeds mentioned earlier and is also what the Curie’s worked on in their extraction of the radium from the pitchblende. This small rock is what contains trace amounts of radium which would be broken down and used to create the products during the radium age. As noted in the historical analysis, the dangers to human health just from a small rock like this are extremely deadly and can have detrimental effects on the human body over time as it is consumed and absorbed into the body. So much damage inflicted by something which occurs naturally in our environment, it is quite alarming really. Image Link: https://history.aip.org/exhibits/curie/brief/03_radium/radium_6.html

This map, courtesy of url is one that highlights the radium concentration in wells throughout the nation, specifically for this project though the focus is in Los Angeles. The map highlights the radium concentration within the area and so I found it to be a good addition to my project. I am including this because as discussed in the historical analysis, back during the radium craze, the most popular way to extract radium and put it into products was through the wells which naturally contained pitchblende which naturally had radium infused in it. I wanted to use this image because it gives the reader the idea of just where the radium was coming from. It wasn’t something just made in a lab at the time, it was extracted through natural resources and then marketed heavily without enough scientific research and testing going into it. 

 The image on the left highlights the use of radium in everyday products during the radium craze while the image on the right echoes the thinking of the general public about radium at the time from the perspective of health. From what we can tell from the image on the left, cooking utensils were infused with radium - yet the reasoning for this is not explicitly clear in the advertisement. But based on what we have discussed about the radium craze, it is fair to assume that the thought process behind this was that the radium infused into the cooking utensils was either supposed to be some sort of novelty factor due to the glow, or they proposed that there were nutritional benefits to having radium in cookware. Overall, the idea seems pretty insane today, especially after seeing just how deadly small specs of radium can be if ingested. This advertisement captures the pop culture use of radium, but also ties into how this element was putting the public at extremely high risk of becoming sick and dying from using a product like this. Images courtesey of: url and 1979559_10202756570052060_8983916438507885954_n.jpg

This image, courtesy of url, is of the Radium Sulphur Springs bathhouse in Los Angeles which dates back to the early twentieth century. This was a place where the people of Los Angeles would come to relax and enjoy the bathhouses infused with radium, which as we now know, was extremely unsafe to be in. The Radium Sulphur Springs bathhouse shut down some time in the 1940’s and there appears to be no remnants of its remains anywhere other than this image found online. 

This is an image of the Radium emanator that was made and sold in Los Angeles and also sold by doctors to their patience. It worked by infusing radium into water through the circular disks that were impregnated with the radioactive material. Image courtesy of: url 

Conclusion: 

In conclusion, the significance of the radium craze of the early twentieth century is that it incorporated products and practices that resulted in the public being exposed to an extremely deadly element that had long term effects on the public’s health. The newly discovered substance truly needed to be put under longer scrutiny and testing by scientists and those in the medical field rather than just making claims about the health benefits it supposedly possessed with no actual evidence to prove these claims had any merit. The side effects from exposure to radium were very gruesome with things like radium jaw resulting from it as well as the increase in cancer rates during the time period. This radium craze teaches us that not all things that come from the environment itself are safe and healthy for us as humans, and that we should always proceed with caution whenever a new discovery is made so that we don’t fall victim to the same mistakes people in the early twentieth century did which put their health in jeopardy. 

Bibliography 

A. Press . “Rada-Thor Is Discovered By Eastern Medic .” Los Angeles Herald , 26 Feb. 1909, p. 3. 

Aimee. “These Shining Lives: ‘The Radium Girls’ By Kate Moore .” Lemuriablog.com, 2017, lemuriablog.com/ar-radium-girls/. 

Brenneman, Richard. “Map of the Day: Radium Levels in Drinking Water.” Richardbrenneman.wordpress.com, 2016, richardbrenneman.wordpress.com/2016/04/25/map-of-the-day-radium-levels-in-drinking-water/. 

Campos, Luis. “The Birth of Living Radium.” Representations, vol. 97, no. 1, 2007, pp. 1–27., doi:10.1525/rep.2007.97.1.1. 

Lavine , Matthew. “The Two Faces of Radium in Early American Nuclear Culture .” Bull. Hist. Chem. , Mississippi State University , 2014, pp. 53–63 , acshist.scs.illinois.edu/awards/OPA%20Papers/2015-Lavine.pdf. 

“The Mystery of the Rays .” History.aip , history.aip.org/exhibits/curie/brief/03_radium/radium_6.html. 

National Institute of Standards and Technology. “Radium-226 Decay Chain.” NIST, www.nist.gov/image-23773. 

Orau. “The Radium Emanator 1927-1929.” Orau.org, 17 Feb. 2009, www.orau.org/ptp/collection/quackcures/radiumemanator.htm. 

“Radium - The Benchmark .” Fas.org , Los Alamos Science , 23 Nov. 1995, fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/pubs/00326629.pdf. 

Royal Society of Chemistry . “Radium .” Rsc.org, www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/88/radium. 

Strong, Wendell M. “Is Cancer Mortality Increasing? .” Aacrjournals.org, 1921, cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/6/3/251. 

“Substitute for Radium .” Los Angeles Herald , 13 July 1910, pp. 9–16. 

Turnbull, Martin. “Radium Sulphur Springs and Hot Baths, 5633 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles (1910's/1920's) .” Martinturnbull.com, 2015, martinturnbull.com/2015/06/04/radium-sulphur-springs-and-hot-baths-5633-melrose-ave-los-angeles-1910s1920s/. 

United States Environmental Protection Agency . “Radionuclide Basics: Radium .” Epa.gov , 0AD, www.epa.gov/radiation/radionuclide-basics-radium.