Marie Curie was then a figure of almost religious magnetism in France. She conveyed an impression of extreme frailty and paleness.” A secretary, Perey thought - then realized she was in the presence of Curie herself. She had gray hair, taken up in a bun, and wore thick glasses. It was a woman dressed entirely in black. She later described her first impression of Marie Curie: “Without a sound, someone entered like a shadow. The Curies often hired the top student from the school as an assistant, and Perey, at 19, was called in for an interview. Her mother gave piano lessons to fill the gap, but Perey had to abandon the idea of going to medical school in favor of a vocational college for chemistry technicians. The death of her father had left the family in financial straits. The Curie laboratory hired researchers from across Europe, but Perey was a local girl, the youngest of five children of a flour-mill owner in Villemomble, just east of the city. Ten tons of ore yielded just one or two milligrams of actinium Perey, who joined the institute as a teenager to be the personal technician for Marie Curie, was an expert in its isolation. She was in the final stages of purifying actinium, one of the rarest and most dangerous elements yet discovered, from uranium ore. ![]() She carefully dosed it with lead and hydrogen sulfide, then with barium, causing the solution to separate into different substances. In a glass vessel, she examined fluid containing metal salts. ![]() Just after Christmas of 1938, a young woman named Marguerite Perey - then 29, with a plain, open face, her eyes intent upon her work - sat at a bench in the Radium Institute of Paris, a brick mansion near the Jardin du Luxembourg. In the early 1900’s, several women factory workers employed to paint watch dials and clock faces were contaminated with Ra, present in those luminous paints, due to regular exposure that resulted in adverse health effects followed by death.The activity of radium is about a million times more than uranium.As the research notes and documents of Ra have been exposed to the radioactive rays, they not safe even today to be handled for further studies.The unit of radioactivity, Curie, is equal to the number of atoms in gram of radium-226 that undergoes decay in one second.According to some studies, ingestion of Ra-224 and Ra-228 has been linked to bone sarcomas. Long-term exposure to the highly radioactive metal can have toxic effects on health, resulting in cataract, anemia, brittle teeth, and cancer. ![]() ĭoes the Element Have Any Dangerous Effects Radium-226 undergoes decay by alpha emission into radon-222 that may have the potential to treat certain types of cancer, including lung cancer.However, the metal is now replaced with cobalt-60 as it poses hazardous effects due to emission of radioactive rays. Luminous paints containing radium has been used in dials of clocks, watches aircraft devices, and other instruments.The element is used to make night lamps, bulbs, and tube lights.A mixture of radium and beryllium is useful as a neutron source.A mild radioactive form of the element, radium-223 is used in the treatment of prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of the body like bones. Ra implants are effective in treating oral cancer through internal radiation therapy.Electron configuration (noble gas configuration)
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