What are the health risks from radium?
Radium is known to cause bone cancer when consumed in high doses. The National Academy of Sciences has concluded that a long-term exposure to elevated levels of radium in drinking water does indeed pose a “higher risk of bone cancer for the people exposed.” The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that long-term consumption of water containing five pCi/l radium will cause 44 added cancer deaths for every million people exposed. The risk doubles to 88 per million at 10 pCi/l, triples to 132 at 15 pCi/l, etc. How does this level of risk compare to other risks in life? It is approximately the same as the risk of dying from lightning strikes, or tornadoes and hurricanes. Fortunately, the risk from radium is manageable because radium can be removed from drinking water. In the 1920s, radium paint was used to make watch dials luminescent. The workers who painted the watch dials would touch the paintbrush tips to their tongues, and inadvertently swallow high doses of radium. In the d
