A Jaw-Dropping Truth about Radium
Except it wasn’t good or healthy. In fact, after continuous use, radium was a nightmare. Fortunately, some radium products, like the face creams, had such low levels of radiation they didn’t have much impact. But people hoping to get that radium glow by drinking it, or those unfortunate factory workers who painted dials by wetting brushes to a fine point in their mouths suffered horrors. One watch painter, Mollie Maggia, consulted a dentist for jaw pain. The dentist discovered her jaw was crumbling. Other girls experienced tumors, pain, and then they started to die at an alarming rate. Eben Byers, a golf champion and steel company president from Pittsburgh. For three years, he drank three bottles of Radithor a day to retain his youthful health and vigor, until his teeth fell out and his jaw disintegrated. Doctors removed his jaw, but he succumbed to his “health elixir,” dying in 1932.