Radium: A Controversial Element In America's History

Until the early 1900's, scientists used several methods of measurement in their efforts to determine the age of the Earth. They studied sedimentation and erosion, stratification (with fossil evidence), measured the salinity of the oceans, and used thermodynamics to determine loss of heat since the Earth's beginning. Each of these approaches yielded estimates that the Earth was anywhere from 24 to 100 million years old.

With her experiments, she became the first woman in France to get a doctorate. Curie decided to continue Henri Becquerel’s experiments with X-rays. She came up with the groundbreaking idea that the rays were actually an atomic property. The paper she wrote reporting her discoveries had to be presented through her professor because women weren’t allowed to address the Academy of Sciences. With this, she continued her work to find new elements. First, she found polonium, which is named for her home country, and then she discovered radium. Pierre and Marie’s greatest work was done in a run-down shed. They worked from 1898 to 1902. The Curies could have made a fortune if they patented their process of extracting and refining radium, but they decided share their knowledge with the world.

I chose to do my project on Marie Curie, the woman who discovered radium and polonium. She was born Mary Sklodowska on November 7, 1867 in Warsaw, Poland and died July 4, 1934 in Passy, France at the age of 67. In 1895, Marie married a professor named Pierre Curie at the age of 26. She was the first woman to complete a doctorate in France in MMMM at the age xxx. And in MMMMM, Curie was also the first female professor at the Sorbonne. She was the first person to use the term “radioactivity”, which is the term still used till this day.

The doctors failed to educate her on numerous issues concerning her health care, Such as the effects of radium

Radium appears as a shiny, silvery metal of high radioactivity. Radium can be “used to treat prostate cancer that has spread to the bones,” and in the past, it was “used in luminous paints, for example in clock and watch dials” (Royal Society of Chemistry, 2017). Radium is present in the environment, and people that live in areas where coal or other fuels are burning and released into the air are more exposed to higher levels of radium. Radium can enter the body by breathing or swallowing and can remain in the body for months, only exiting in small amounts by urine and feces (“Public Health Statement for Radium,” 1990). High levels of radium exposure over a long period of time are extremely dangerous to the health of an individual. The harmful effects of radium could cause “anemia, cataracts, fractured teeth, cancer (especially bone cancer), and death” (“Public Health Statement for Radium,” 1990). The greater amount of radium exposure an individual receives, the greater their chance is to developing one of these diseases (“Public Health Statement for Radium,”

It is now known that radium, shown in figure 4, is a potent carcinogen (a substance the cause’s cancer (Wilbraham, Staley, Marta, & Waterman, 2005)). It emits a form of ionizing radiation which “includes electromagnetic radiation (e.g., gamma rays and X-rays) as well as particles (e.g., alpha particles, beta particles, high-speed neutrons, high-speed electrons, high-speed protons, etc.)” (National Library of Medicine, n.d.). Acute studies have been done on the effects of radium exposure on the human body by organizations like the Geneva World Health Organization, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, and Monographs on the Evaluation of the Carcinogenic Risk of Chemicals to Man. As a result of their findings, The National Library of Medicine states that sufficient evidence has been provided showing that prolonged exposure to Raduim-224, Radium-226,

When Henri Becquerel discovered radioactivity in 1896, it inspired Marie and Pierre to investigate it further. They researched a lot of substances for any signs of radioactivity, and discovered something that was more radioactive than uranium. They discovered radium, an element that damaged tissue, so they used that to fight against cancer. “They found that the mineral pitchblende was more radioactive than uranium and concluded that it must contain other radioactive substances. From it they managed to extract two previously unknown elements, polonium and radium, both more radioactive than uranium” (Nobel Media). These discoveries led to radium being used to treat cancer and other diseases, and them getting their first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903. After Pierre passed away, she continued with her own studies. Marie successfully isolated radium and proved its existence. She also studied the properties and compounds of these radioactive elements. “She also documented the properties of the radioactive elements and their compounds. Radioactive compounds became important as sources of radiation in both scientific experiments and in the field of medicine, where they are used to treat tumors” (Nobel Media). This discovery led to the further development of X-rays and her receiving her second Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911. Marie Curie was the first woman ever to win two Nobel Prizes in two fields and in multiple sciences, two incredible

My paper is about Irene Joliot – Curie the Nobel – Peace Prize winner that created the first artificial radioactive element. Her life was very successful and fulfilling. Irene’s life was very successful, because she accomplished many things and inspired future scientist. Her and her mom’s work was very useful in World War I. Her work with radiation also became very important to new discoveries of atoms.

Doctors had been using radiation to destroy cancerous cells since the unfolding of X-rays and radium in the 1890s, but both techniques had their own issues. X-ray machines were complicated to make use of, and radium implanted near tumors. In addition, X-rays weren’t strong enough to be entirely effective, and as for both of them, they were quite expensive.

Jane Hall was an American physicist born in 1915 at a small town outside Denver Colorado. Shortly after receiving her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago in 1942, Hall became a research assistant at the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory. Her reputation like so many other determined female scientist of the time proved an excellent scientist and administrator earning her a position as a Senior Supervisor at Hanford less than a year later. At Hanford, in addition to her normal duties, she led several studies that uncovered information about the effects of plutonium inhalation on the human body. After the war, Hall and her husband, David Hall, moved to Los Alamos to work for Los Alamos National Laboratory. She was a firm believer in the

Thus consideration of absorbed dose to minimizing dose delivery and assessment of radiation damage to bone marrow is important. To attain effective radionuclide therapy, it is essential to identify appropriate radionuclides as well as to develop better bone seeking agents that could result in good in vivo localization and desired excretion [12]. There are two major groups of radionuclides for treating painful bone metastases including, β emitting radionuclides; 32P,89Sr, 90Y, 153Sm, 166Ho, 177Lu, 186Re, 188Re and α emitting radionuclide;223Ra [13-19]. The 32P and 89Sr were the first radioisotope to be evaluated for palliative treatment of bone metastases [20, 21]. Currently, there are several commercially available β emitting radionuclides for bone pain palliation as 89SrCl2, 153Sm-EDTMP and 186Re-HDEP [22, 23]. However, another radionuclide is under research for palliative treatment of bone metastasis, such as 90Y, 166Ho, 177Lu and 188Re. Recently, 223RaCl2 that uses the bone-seeking α emitter 223Ra has become available and it approved by the FDA for clinical use in 2013 [24-27]. For each atom of 223 Ra, 4 alpha particles are released that they are representing 94 % of the total radiation energy emitted

In 2007, it is predicted that almost 1.5 million people will be diagnosed with cancer in the United States (Pickle et al., 2007). More than half of these cancer patients will undergo the use of radiation as a means for treating cancer at some point during the course of their disease (Perez and Brady, 1998). Cancer, a disease caused by an uncontrollable growth of abnormal cells, affects millions of people around the world. Radiotherapy is one of the well known various methods used to treat cancer, where high powered rays are aimed directly at the tumor from the outside of the body as external radiation or an instrument is surgically placed inside the body producing a result of internal radiation. Radiation is delivered to the cancerous regions of the body to damage and destroy the cells in that area, terminating the rapid growth and division of the cells. Radiation therapy has been used by medicine as a treatment for cancer from the beginning of the twentieth century, with its earliest beginnings coming from the discovery of x-rays in 1895 by Wilhelm Röntgen. With the advancements in physics and computer programming, radiation had greatly evolved towards the end of the twentieth century and made the radiation treatment more effective. Radiation therapy is a curative treatment approach for cancer because it is successful in killing cancerous tumor cells and stop them from regenerating.

It is not until recently that people have become dependent on this element, and not necessarily for the good of it, and the world. There is an obsession with uranium because of its unique properties. Uranium is extremely powerful because of its radioactive properties and unstable nuclei, especially that of Uranium-235. It is able to break down and release high frequency radiation through alpha and beta decay. It is because of these characteristics that Uranium has such a craze on the population of the world (Cox, 1995; Scerri, 2007). The properties of uranium allow people to create powerful plants to produce electricity, and weapons strong enough to destroy the world.

There are many advantages and disadvantages to the use of radioactive elements in medicines. Some advantages include the fact that

     It was not easy for Marie and Pierre to convince the science community of their new findings. Marie succeeded in separating the radium from the barium, but it wasn't easy. She had to treat very large amounts of pitchblende, but she had plenty of pitchblende to use. (The Curie's