created 2025-05-06, & modified, =this.modified
tags:y2025
rel: Survey of Shadows
Undark was the name for a luminous paint made with a mixture of radioactive radium and zinc sulfide. Similar products were named Luna and Marvelite.
Radium was discovered by Pierre and Marie Curie in 1898. A few years later an electrical engineer named William J. Hammer discovered you could mix radium with zinc and they’d give off a faint blue-green light.
It was marketed as glow in the dark paint and used for radium dials on watches, clocks, speedometers and gauges.
Radium Girls
The radium girls was the name given to workers in the industry who became sick because of exposure to the radium contained in the products.
Radium jaw was the most common side effect because the painters were taught to put the bristles of the paintbrush in their lips to return it to a fine point after each stroke.