Mae Keane, the Last 'Radium Girl,' Dies at 107
npr.org
npr.org
Horrific stuff.
I've always found it curious how nonchalant people are with dangerous substances before it's realized how hazardous they can be. My grandfather loaded asbestos into railcars at a factory for 30 years, I still can't quite imagine how he must have felt when he fully realized the dangers it posed.
According to Wikipedia:
The U.S. Radium Corporation hired some 70 women to perform various tasks including the handling of radium, while the owners and the scientists familiar with the effects of radium carefully avoided any exposure to it themselves; chemists at the plant used lead screens, masks and tongs.[1] US Radium had even distributed literature to the medical community describing the “injurious effects” of radium.
They have teeth, such that just baring their teeth can be enough to incite action.
In this case for example, it was an iconic case. But each of the Radium Girls didn't really get that great of a deal out of it ($10k in 1920's money). And US Radium Corp didn't exactly crumble after the lawsuit. It functioned for many decades after.
If you find these sorts of things amusing, check out Thomas Midgley, Jr. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley,_Jr.).
There are usually people who do, but they will be labelled anti-progress and anti-science because there is no scientific background for their worries (yet).
Just imagine if the anti-vaccine hysteria of today was present in the the past. Polio and small pox could still be rampant today.
Look at what the anti-nuclear power activists achieved during the 1970s - a greater reliance on fossil fuels for generating electricity.
Now today we are dealing with unfounded fears of GMOs. You and I can probably comfortably live with higher food prices, but millions around the world can not wait for 30 years of study "just in case."
And then you have fearmonging pushed for political reasons, such as this new opposition to building the Keystone pipeline, created to be a political wedge issue. The result? More oil transported by railcar, which uses more energy and causes more oil spills. The rail yard near me now had to expand into swamp on the Mississippi river[1] to accommodate for all the extra oil railcars.
[1] http://therippleeffectmn.blogspot.com/2014/11/wetland-versus...
In this case the scientists and companies knew about the risks and had stringent safety protocols for some people but not for others. If it ain't safe for the CEO, it ain't safe for the janitor.
.. before Chernobyl and Fukushima. I think we need to be careful about claiming the safety of nuclear power in a thread about the dangers of radium.
We've been lucky so far. There have been multiple nuclear accidents -- including 3 mile island -- that could have been far worse and weren't because of luck. Luck is not a viable strategy for dealing with nuclear power.
Chernobyl did serve as a pretty decent area-denial weapon, but advances in both process and reactor design make such a thing extraordinarily unlikely today. The theoretical, worst-case scenarios for nuclear are still better than the every-day reality of coal and oil.
> Indeed, eating 29 pounds' worth of the radioactive creatures would result in radioactivity exposure equivalent to that of a transatlantic plane ride.
I think you guys'll be OK...
In no way are worst case scenarios for nuclear better than coal/oil. For example, we don't have the capability to evacuate nyc or san diego.
I could be wrong, but I think the claim is more "the fact that some people, even a large number of people, feel uncomfortable is not scientific evidence that something is dangerous." Or, "the ability to tell a story about some possible disaster doesn't actually make that disaster likely or possible."
I went to high school in Riverside, California. UC Riverside has an incredible entomology department ( http://www.entomology.ucr.edu/ ). I'm glad that UCR is able to largely escape notice when it wants to study all kinds of invasive species, even if people who have no understanding of how the lab works can come up with nightmare scenarios involving escaped insects or lab workers infected with rare, deadly and contagious diseases. My opinion isn't based on the fact that none of those nightmare scenarios has happened yet; it's based on the fact that the people who know what they're talking about say that those scenarios are literally impossible.
Fukushima involved a major earthquake, a tsunami, a lack of power, and a plant that had reached its end of life. Even with that combination of bad luck, less radiation was released than Chernobyl. I don't worry about a similar disaster in the United States because we simply don't have many nuclear plants in areas that can actually be hit by tsunamis. Clearly we have reactors in earthquake-prone areas (and others in tornado-prone and hurricane-prone areas), but the plants were designed with those dangers in mind. While it is possible to have a similar disaster in the US, the chance of it happening is small enough that I don't lose sleep over the risk.
Chernobyl is the worst nuclear power plant accident ever. Chernobyl's design was below Western standards of the time, and well below current Western standards. There is no plant in operation in the US that could have a disaster as large as Chernobyl. And there is certainly no chance of a disaster larger than Chernobyl. It is literally impossible (for a larger disaster to occur).
Great. Thanks.
If you'd said "very, very unlikely," I'd be fine, but in practice not much of anything is actually impossible. So now I have to worry about "people who know what they're talking about" throwing around unjustified assertions.
It's another when scientists say that widespread concern for nightmare scenarios is based entirely on misunderstanding and scientific illiteracy. For instance, I don't worry about nuclear power plants turning into nuclear bombs -- even in the face of terrorism -- not because it's never happened but because the plants are designed to make that scenario impossible. I don't worry about a meltdown that melts through the power plant and the Earth's crust creating a new volcano because scientists say that's not possible.
Yes, there are nightmare scenarios that actually are possible. But when the two sides are "real experts who say the risk is too small to worry about" and "uncomfortable scientifically illiterate public," I put my money on the experts.
Nuclear reactors physically cannot generate a nuclear explosion of the sort you'd get from a bomb.
They've been in use for 60 years. More people per unit of energy die from solar and hydro accidents than from nuclear power, and coal is many, many times more deadly. Turkey's coal mining accident this year killed 3x what Chernobyl - the world's worst nuclear disaster - did, and such mining disasters are routine.
http://physics.kenyon.edu/people/sullivan/PHYS102/PHYS102F12...
You continue to claim that because something hasn't happened yet, it won't. Flight happened for 60 years before the SR-71. Just to pick one obvious example.
301 people dying in Turkey is irrelevant (though obviously my condolences to their families). Coal doesn't have the ability to, for example, leak radioactive particles over the entirety of nyc. Which we have no practical method to evacuate.
http://www.rmi.org/RFGraph-health_effects_from_US_power_plan... indicates 13,000 deaths a year attributable to coal. In the extraordinarily unlikely (given better reactor design and regulation) event of a Chernobyl-level incident near NYC, in the extraordinarily unlikely (given that Chernobyl killed 100) event it kills 10% of New York City, nuclear power's death toll would still only match coal's during that time.
Incidentally, Chernobyl's exclusion zone is ~30km radius. There aren't any plants that close to NYC - they're generally carefully placed and have extensive evacuation plans in place for the surrounding areas.
Your facts about chernobyl are misleading. Pripyat -- population roughly 50k -- was evacuated. Hence few direct deaths. What can't we possibly do in nyc? Evacuate it. And it's not like there's a magical air filter 30km outside nuclear plants. Indian Point has 15 million living within 50 miles at most. Hope Creek is 40 miles from Philly. And those two are just off the top of my head. Unless your strategy in the case of a meltdown is to hope that the winds blow the right direction -- in which case I reiterate my point about luck.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_Creek_Flood A coal slurry dam collapsed and the flood killed 125 persons and left 4000 homeless.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire A fire in coal mine fire that is burning since 70 yeasr ago. The region is almost inhabitable. It will probably burn for 250 years more.
My point of view could be skewed by prior knowledge, but I can still see asking some questions before sticking auto-luminescent material in my mouth.
Well, we smoke cigarettes knowing that they are harmful to us.
During which time the tobacco companies were actively concealing the negative health effects and campaigning against not only regulation but simply providing truthful information about tobacco's hazards.
Instrumental in much of this was Edward Bernays, the father of the modern Public Relations industry (he coined the term after the word "propaganda" lost its lustre after its use by Germany in WWI).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
The BBC series by excellent documentarian Adam Curtis (I've encountered a few of his other works and writings recently), The Century of the Self covers Bernays:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self
Many of the same methods and techniques were applied to corporate disinformation campaigns against controls over leaded paint, asbestos, ozone, auto safety. Look up GM's attempts to smear Ralph Nader:
In early March 1966, several media outlets, including The New Republic and The New York Times, reported that GM had tried to discredit Nader, hiring private detectives to tap his phones and investigate his past, and hiring prostitutes to trap him in compromising situations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Nader
Naomi Oreskes has drawn the parallels -- in methods, organizations, and often the very individuals -- between corporate disinformation campaigns in the case of tobacco, smoking, acid rain, CFCs and the ozone layer, and global warming, in her book Merchants of Doubt.
Interestingly, the article I linked missed the woman FTA, possibly because she quit early.
Radium was everywhere including toothpastes, shampoons (cure against hair loss).
Fortunately only a few people could afford Radium-enhaced products, since it was expensive. Side effects started to appear quite soon too.
There were other popular uses of radiation, until '50 many shoes shops had X-ray equimpent that allow to see how shoes fit [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope]. Not that great idea, after all.
For me it is kind of warning against using everything that men invent or men can do. There are always things we don't fully know or understand. In the long term something could be a great danger for all of us.
Before we jump into next great thing it is good to stop for a while...
I have always wondered what it is in our modern society that is incredibly dangerous that we are still not fully aware of the long term effects. PVC piping, propylene glycol, some food additives?