SK's illustrated fact of the day: 4/17/14

Did you know... that in the 1920's and 30's, makeup and lotion containing radioactive materials were promoted for good health and beauty?

We know now that radioactive material is, to say the least, Really Bad For You. But after the Curies discovered radium in the late 1890's, of course the health and beauty industry capitalized on it. According to one advertisement in 1918, "An ever-flowing Fountain of Youth and Beauty has at last been found in the Energy Rays of Radium. When scientists discovered Radium they hardly dreamed they had unearthed a revolutionary “Beauty Secret.” They know it now. Radium Rays vitalize and energize all living tissue. This Energy has been turned into Beauty’s aid. Each and every ‘Radior’ Toilet Requisite contains a definite qualtity of Actual Radium."

The stuff made all the usual beauty claims, firming, rejeuvenating, and particularly suggested a "brighter, glowing complexion," ha! There are no statistics that I've seen directly tying the use of irradiated cosmetics to skin cancer, but it IS worth noting that a man who invented an (ahem) implant to cure impotence later died of bladder cancer, which doesn't exactly seem like a coincidence.

I've seen this before. It's interesting what people used to tout as good for you. Cigarettes, for example, were endorsed by doctors. When I was a kid I remember ashtrays in the waiting room and outside the elevator in the hospital. Shoot, I remember even in the mid 1990's when I worked in a factory shortly after graduating high school I could smoke right at my station. Whether my co-workers smoked or not wasn't even an issue. I quit 10 years ago this month, actually. Yay me!

On the subject of radium. Ever heard of the radium girls? They worked in a watch factory making watches with glow in the dark dials for the military around WWI. They would "lick" or put the brush between their lips to make it a fine point in between painting the dials with glow in the dark paint made with radium. They of course got sick, but the whole thing led to changes in labor laws regarding illness caused by occupational hazards. 

Wow, I hadn't heard that story! I knew about the children getting injured in the thread-winding machines in the early 1900s and how that led to child-labor laws, but I've never heard that one-- fascinating!

My mother was born with a port wine stain birthmark which covered half of her face.  When she was a child in the '30s, her father took her for treatment where they used radium in an attempt to remove the birthmark.  Didn't help her complexion or affect the birthmark.  

Weird science.