According to a five year study carried out by research teams at the university of northampton and kingston university and funded by unesco the international union of geological sciences and the international geoscience programme antique radium dialed watches could be a legitimate health hazard for their owners.
Wall clock with radium dial.
Subsequently radium dials have largely been replaced by phosphorescent or occasionally tritium based light sources.
Any dial made with radium after 1950 was marked with ra or r indicating the presence of radium paint on the dial.
In fact timepieces with radium dials were still made for years after but not in as large of numbers.
A radium watch becomes hazardous only when someone opens one and tinkers with the dials inhaling radioactive dust particles.
The bottom line watches and clocks made with radium are considered.
Luminous radium found a place in a dial painting studios where glowing paint was applied to instrument gauges clocks and wristwatches for the usrc united states radium company.
Dials painted in ottawa appeared on westclox s popular big ben little ben and travel clocks.
This glow in the dark paint was also used on airplane dials and gauges which allowed people to read clocks gauges and dials at night with no other light.
After testing 30 watches kept in a typical room researchers.
This radium dial was probably painted by a dialpainter that later may have suffered and or died as a result of having painted the numbers and hands on this and other watch dials.
By the 1920 s and 1930 s some dialpainters and former dialpainters began to suffer from a variety of illnesses often crippling and frequently fatal as a result of.
When word spread about radium many consumers refused to purchase these clocks and watches anymore.
Radium dials are watch clock and other instrument dials painted with radioluminescent paint containing radium 226 radium dial production peaked in the first decade of the 20th century as radiation poisoning was then unknown.
And we all know that such dials should pose little in the way of actual hazards as long as you don t make the mistake of opening up the watch and accidentally inhale a fragment of radium paint radium let s recall has a half life of about 1600 years so radium dial watches and clocks from the early part of the 20th century are still.
The first such studios were open in new jersey newark illinois and in ottawa canada.