The hunt for Marie Curie's radioactive fingerprints in Paris
bbc.com116 points by rmason 8 days ago
116 points by rmason 8 days ago
> Marie Curie worked here from 1914 until 1934, the year of her death, handling radioactive elements including radium, which she and her husband Pierre Curie had discovered in 1898. For most of her life, she did this with bare, increasingly radium-scarred hands.
This almost sounds medieval to my ears. It’s kinda freighting how far we’ve gotten in merely 100 years.
The ~15% infant mortality at the time was spectacular progress and yet by modern standards unbearable. Medieval would have been closer to 50%. So on this measure about a third of the way back to the Middle Ages.
https://www.ined.fr/en/everything_about_population/demograph...
Modern rates range from 0.15% (Slovenia) to 10% (Afghanistan):
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/infant-mortalit...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_an...
Louis Pasteur's work establishing germ theory happened in the 1860's, and germ theory as the cause of disease wasn't really widely accepted until roughly this time period.
Blood letting (and its foundation the four humors) was still a thing when the Curies discovered radium.
We have come a long way indeed.
I've recently come around on bloodletting. It seems barbarous, but there are some ailments that it really does help with. It wasn't a wild extrapolation for our ancestors to think it helped with other things. For example, gout: I recently had an appointment to give blood during a pretty bad gout flare, but I didn't want to reschedule so I hobbled over there, cane and all. By the time I was done, I felt better than I had in days. Looked it up, and turns out there's a not-insignificant amount of research on the subject.
I can totally imagine one of my gout-ridden relatives incidentally discovering that after losing a good chunk of blood (maybe a hunting accident, or a fuckup in a pottery workshop) that their foot stopped stabbing in pain. And then going "what else can I cure this way?".
And there's some new things that bloodletting is the only known treatment for. Like PFAS accumulation.
> And then going "what else can I cure this way?"
That's the difference. Bloodletting seems barbarous because it definitely didn't cure most things it was used for.
What is the mechanism by which bloodletting helps? And could we not accomplish the same thing by filtering it, dialysis style?
> PFAS accumulation
Highly overblown. People drink alcohol at quantities know to be carginogenic and we don’t have the histeria that we do about something in the ppb range.
I just read The Radium Girls, about the ̶w̶o̶m̶e̶n children who were hired to paint clock faces and military instruments with radium paint. 100s of young girls who died in their 20s and 30s because they were carelessly exposed to the radiation. It struck me that they were born around the same time as my own grandmother. We really have come a long way in a fairly short amount of time.
You're leaving out the horrific part where they weren't told about the known dangers and we routinely licking/shaping their brushes to get finer points which was a big source of the radium exposure.
I've heard this licking paint brush as a cause of many early deaths. I just don't get it. WTF would you put a paintbrush in your mouth with whatever substance on it? Who does this? How did it start? How is it so common? What is wrong with people!
It's part of shaping the brush to get a fine point often you run it along the back of your other hand to help shape it but I've seen licking it too on occassion.
They would also paint their faces with it, so when they went out at night they would glow. Crazy
I agree with your point, but describing women in their 20s & 30s as "children" is rather demeaning.
Most of the workers were 13 and 14 year old girls. They didn't die until their 20s and 30s.
Someone has to find out the hard way. It was a time when people to Röntgen pictures for fun.
Medieval? The 19th century was not a good place.
My dad had childhood shoe shopping helped by xrays on the high street.
Radiation was treated different back then, look at these choice anecdotes.
> [A patent radioactive medicine]’s most loyal customer was Eben Byers, well known in Pittsburgh society as a wealthy manufacturer, sportsman, and playboy, approaching fifty years of age. Byers continued to take Radithor more desperately each year as his health failed, until in 1931 he entered a hospital, feeble and emaciated, his very breath radioactive. He did not have time to develop cancer but died of direct radiation injury within a few months.
> This was the first proven case of death from a patent radioactive medicine ... The public was not easily convinced that radioactivity could be dangerous at all [...] Doctors of sound reputation continued to use heavy doses of radiation to treat not only serious ailments but also cosmetic problems like warts or excess facial hair. Some even offered men temporary birth control through X-ray sterilization. As late as 1940 many hospital and laboratory workers were casually exposing themselves to radiation at levels far above the official guidelines.
[...]
> During the 1950s X-rays were often used to kill unwanted body hair, thousands of fluoroscopes in shoe Stores across the United States and Europe showed people the bones in their children’s feet; some hospitals routinely X-rayed infants simply to please parents with an inside view of their offspring.
From "Nuclear Fear; a history of images"
A shoe-fitting fluoroscope! I’m only half-joking, but one using terahertz radiation would be very handy to have while shoe-shopping with children.
Kids can’t reliably tell you the fit of their shoes, and some footwear doesn’t yield to the “thumb-at-toe” test.
(1) https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/when-xrays-were-all-the-rage-a...
I think you could use visible light and photogrammetry for the same purpose. You might need to take your socks off, though. Or put on a pair of the disposable thin "try on" socks the stores have for people who don't wear socks of their own.
An X-ray machine was in the shoe store when I was little, but my father told us not to let it be used on us.
Limbs are much less sensitive to ionizing radiation, though. It's not good to play with in any case, of course.
I wish we still had this. It could be done using far less power today, and besides, it's not like baby boomers are all getting foot cancer.
A possibly better solution would be to establish a standard for shoe measurements in 3D space, that could then be compared to a 3D image of the foot (taken with visible light). Cameras and computers are cheap these days.
Solves the fit problem quickly and avoids any X-Ray exposure.
Maybe.. but feet deform when standing in shoes and being able to see that effect seems very helpful.
I wonder if it’s more of an issue for the person giving the x-rays.
No doubt, but now with CCDs they don't need to be near the operating machine. The machine could be in a lead lined booth with a video display outside it for the shoe store employee to watch.
I think the x-ray machines can now be made much more sensitive so the dose could be vastly smaller. That said, it's a bit unnerving when someone tells you something is save and then goes and hides behind a lead lined booth - even for me as someone who understands the stats around it.
I do think it's in general a good idea to use such tools for better fits, shoes tend to focused more on narrow feet which is possibly a side effect of the shoes themselves. I have to stick to certain brands that cater towards wide feet. Perhaps in the future 3D printed shoes will be good enough that I can swap out my regular shoes for hyper-customized ones.
Nearly everything you find in nature has such low levels of radioactivity that handling them isn't dangerous.
It's only when you start refining and enriching natural things that they become really risky. Unfortunately thats what Curie did.
> It's only when you start refining and enriching natural things that they become really risky.
It’s a big factor, but not only. You don’t need to refine or enrich anything to have radon poisoning, for example.
It’s still similar. Radon concentrations in medieval dwellings would never reach the kind of concentrations you can see in modern homes because they leaked far more air. I wouldn’t necessarily call a tight home refining or enriching but it’s still dramatically increasing the concentration.
Tunnels and caves could still be problematic though there’s a lot of gasses that can cause problems in such environments.
Inhaling/ingesting concentrated radioactive substances is a big danger with that kind of thing. There are so many variables and it's hard to measure. Health effects depend on where it ends up within the body.
I live in Sceaux, bit south of Paris, where she lived some years. I once visited her house (now owned by someone who worked with one or more descendants of her) at some special occasion. One of the bedroom has a radiation sticker, and is officially controlled by the authorities, as some radiation were found. She obviously used to bring some work home :)
*Maria Skłodowska-Curie, as she herself insisted on being called. BBC should know better.
any source on this? It's difficult to find any primary source on her opinion
All her written texts i can find after she moved to France she referred to herself as "Marie"
In her biography of Pierre Curie, she herself wrote of herself before she married "Mon nom est Marie Sklodowska"
here's a letter she wrote to the president and signed simply "Marie Curie" https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/letter-from-mar...
You're focusing only on "Marie", whereas the greater emphasis should arguably be on "Skłodowska".
AFAIK, in 19th century France, a woman's legal name did not change after she married. She adopted her husband's name as a matter of usage, however. FWIW, I, too, have heard that Marie Skłodowska-Curie wished to make prominent her maiden name, perhaps in the double barrelled form (which is the way I've seen it many times in other languages).
You are claiming she wished to be called Skłodowska-Curie but all her own correspondance is signed Marie Curie and as the author points out I have never seen anyone actually source this alleged wish.
Are you sure you are not a victim of Polish nationalism here?
She even wanted to be Skłodowska, but then she wouldn’t be able to work as scientist and be respected. Curie is her husband's and that was the only way to be someone back then.
This sounds false.
"Contrary to the practice of some other countries, French women do not legally change names when they marry; however, it is customary that they adopt their husband's name as a "usage name" for daily life." [0]
Regardless.
She is far more widely known as Marie Curie in the English speaking world. Using any other name would be confusing for most readers.
As long as the "Curie" is kept the confusion is small, however serves as a vehicle to teach more about her and the time.
And after a while it won't be confusing at all.
The BBC are quite poor at this kind of thing, preferring their style guide to official names. The still use Czech Republic for Czechia, Republic of Ireland for Ireland, and Turkey for Türkiye.
> The still use Czech Republic for Czechia
Naive question but is Czechia a new name? The UN lists "Czech Republic" as official name and "Czechia" as the short name.
> Republic of Ireland for Ireland
To be fair, I don't think this is partisan, but rather just a way to differentiate the state from the island.
As an Irish person, yes. Just calling Ireland Ireland when you are specifically being asked what country you are from for official purposes is a bit too orbital a view. Same goes for discussions from within a country holding contested ground sharing the name of a country with an island, blah blah.
It's a complicated subject, and nobody begrudges them the clarity.
I think if you ask around, you'll find yourself very much in the minority of Irish people. Republic of Ireland is almost never used outside of the football team, as it's simply not the name of the country.
While I. The context of the BBC, the distinction to Northern Ireland is relevant.
You're not understanding my comment at all. I'm not talking about the internal use of ROI within Ireland.
Not once have I heard anyone even broach this as a topic. Nobody cares. If someone asks you where you are from, and you tell them Ireland, and they inquire the north or the republic - what are you going to do? Just repeat "Ireland" at them like some kind of contrarian idiot? Tell them you are "not from northern Ireland" so as to rule out all of the places you are not from?
ROI is a perfectly serviceable term for helping people understand what you mean, if the context isn't clear enough already.
> Not once have I heard anyone even broach this as a topic.
I have a feeling you just don't pay attention or, from previous experience with you, are incapable of determining how other people feel about this topic.
> ROI is a perfectly serviceable term for helping people understand what you mean, if the context isn't clear enough already.
It's a specifically politically charged term used by people who either don't know better or have a bone to pick. It's not commonly used in Ireland and it's not used to differentiate innocently between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
> It's a specifically politically charged term used by people who either don't know better or have a bone to pick.
And you, quite clearly, appear to be the one who has a bone to pick! Everybody else is (thankfully!) now moving on with their lives.
> Everybody else is (thankfully!) now moving on with their lives.
Or you're just blind to the issues. Your comments here and lack of familiarity with Irish politics and culture suggests you may be a non-Irish person making assumptions about the country? Or maybe you are Irish and oblivious.
> from previous experience with you
Are you confusing me with someone else? I don't think we've spoken before.
> I have a feeling you just don't pay attention
To what exactly? Where does this topic come up regularly for you?
> It's a specifically politically charged term used by people who either don't know better or have a bone to pick.
You are the only one picking a bone. I'm merely relating that I don't care and have never heard anyone care before.
> It's not commonly used in Ireland
Did you even read my responses? I said as much myself. You're arguing with the ghost of someone else or something.
Just say what town of Ireland you're from?
How's this help when speaking to someone who hasn't memorized a map of Ireland and does not know which town is in which country?
> Naive question but is Czechia a new name?
Not a new name, but Czechia has made a concerted effort since 2016 to have it used in place of the Czech Republic. Almost all international body and most media style guides have since acceded. The BBC lags.
> To be fair, I don't think this is partisan, but rather just a way to differentiate the state from the island.
No, like the British Isles, this is very much a controversial name and one to which the Irish Government formally objects. This is even the source of a diplomatic disagreement between the Irish Government and Wikipedia due to their style guide.
If an article would use "Islamic Republic of Iran" then it should use "Czech Republic". If they would just write "Iran" then they should use "Czechia".
I don’t know about the UK but, In America I never hear Czechia, just Czech Republic. To my ears it sounds no more formal than “United States”. I understand that’s not the case in the EU though.
To be fair Czechia has been official for less than a decade. Unless people are dealing with it on a regular basis they're going to use what they know which, for most is still Czech Republic.
Czechia has been the official name in English since independence in 1993. It's only since 2016 that the Government of the Czech Republic has been making a concerted effort to change usage abroad.
No, that's not the case, as even in contexts where the long name is normally used, such as UN nameplates and resolutions, Czechia is now used in preparation for the removal of the long name.
> The still use Czech Republic for Czechia
Czech Republic is sill the formal name, right? Last time I checked it was overly formal, but not wrong to use it.
> Republic of Ireland for Ireland
Brits do this because of Northern Ireland (mostly for bad reasons, but still).
Countries are called differently depending on language and context. It’s fine.
> Brits do this because of Northern Ireland (mostly for bad reasons, but still).
This isn't specific to the British! ROI and NI refer to different countries on the island of Ireland.
I'm curious why you state "mostly for bad reasons"? (I assume you are American!)
> This isn't specific to the British!
But it is. Republic of Ireland when used to refer to the country is used almost exclusively in Britain and specifically to marginalise the country of Ireland.
I’m dubious—I’m an American who knows comparatively little about the Troubles and yet have always thought “Republic of Ireland” was the official name. I certainly use it fairly often, completely innocuously, to distinguish between it and Northern Ireland. I probably picked it up from the Wikipedia article, which prominently lists them both as common names.
the republic of ireland, or the irish republic is the official name of the country as stated on the constitution. it's not offensive at all to my irish self and is on every international letter address. southern ireland is mildly offensive because it implies ignorance of my government but not very much so. if it was offensive we wouldn't use the term northern ireland so often. the official name for that is so long i don't remember it off hand.
> the republic of ireland, or the irish republic is the official name of the country as stated on the constitution.
No, the exact opposite is true. The Irish Government even instruct all bodies of the State to never use either term.
> it's not offensive at all to my irish self and is on every international letter address.
It may not offend you, but is not on any international address. Don't know where you get that idea.
> southern ireland is mildly offensive because it implies ignorance of my government but not very much so.
Southern Ireland and Republic of Ireland are both used in different contexts primarily by British institutions to marginalise Ireland and to appease Unionists, who complain any time Ireland is used to refer to the country.
> if it was offensive we wouldn't use the term northern ireland so often. the official name for that is so long i don't remember it off hand.
The official name of Northern Ireland is "Northern Ireland".
Honestly, I can't tell if you're trolling or actually this ignorant of your own country?
I’m pretty sure they prefer “Kyiv”, though.
Spelling is one thing, but no one pronounces it the Ukrainian way (ˈkɪjiu̯) which is somewhat torturous for non-Ukrainian speakers. The best common pronunciation in English that more or less respects English phonetic patterns IMO is "KEE-iv".
Still, people need to respect the fact that each language can create their own variants. English speakers are under no obligation to call Wales "Cymru" or Finland "Suomi". It's fine.
>Czech Republic for Czechia
why single it out? even the countries that use (mostly) latin alphabet don't necessary have the same name in english - Poland is Polska, Lithuania is Lietuva, Estonia is Eesti, Finland is Suomi, etc. And latinizations/romanizations are often wildly inaccurate - Ukraine is actually Ukraina, Russia is actually Rossia, and the english pronunciations are completely wrong. Japan is Nihon. etc etc.
>Republic of Ireland for Ireland
there are two irelands, fyi
>Türkiye
no one can type that u on a keyboard without googling and copypasting it. you might as well insist on using hieroglyphs for CJK things
> Czechia
> why single it out?
Because the country of Czechia has asked the English-speaking world to refer to it that way.
> there are two irelands, fyi
There is Ireland, the island of Ireland, and Northern Ireland. Republic of Ireland refers to the soccer team and nothing else, FYI.
The country of Ireland has also requested that the English speaking world use its name, Ireland and specifically not the Republic of Ireland.
> no one can type that u on a keyboard without googling and copypasting it. you might as well insist on using hieroglyphs for CJK things
Ah, so we'll just decide to rename countries with inconvenient letters. How very colonial of you.
>Republic of Ireland refers to the soccer team and nothing else, FYI.
'The Republic of Ireland' is the official descriptive term for the country named 'Ireland' in English, per the Republic of Ireland Act 1948. I have certainly heard 'Republic of Ireland' used in Ireland, or just 'the Republic', but almost always in cases where the descriptive distinction is important. I'd agree that outside of those cases, using 'Republic of Ireland' by default can be a problem.
>Because the country of Czechia has asked the English-speaking world to refer to it that way.
Unlike the political complexities around 'Republic of Ireland', 'The Czech Republic' actually is the official long name of the country in English, with 'Czechia' the official short name; the country's government promotes 'Czechia', but I don't think there is a suggestion that 'Czech Republic' is no longer acceptable. I have also never actually heard anyone in the country refer to it as Czechia in English.
> The Republic of Ireland' is the official descriptive term for the country named 'Ireland' in English, per the Republic of Ireland Act 1948.
The context is important. The Act revoked dominion status and role of the British Crown in the Irish executive branch, thus making Ireland a republic, and so deserving of a new description (the previous having been the Irish Free State).
Czechia is the only way I've heard the country referred to (in the news as it rarely comes up in person).
Accusations of colonialism are preposterous. Every language has its own names for other countries and cities. These range from adaptations to the phonetic patterns of the language (pl: Warszawa -> de: Warschau; fr: Paris -> nl: Parijs) or completely different (pl: Polska -> hu: Lengyelország; cy: Cymru -> en: Wales).
This is just how language works.
No, you're completely wrong. We - as an international society - generally accept the name that countries would like to be called, even in our own languages.
In English, we say: Sri Lanka, not Ceylon, Burkina Faso, not the Republic of Upper Volta, Botswana, not the Bechuanaland Protectorate, Bangladesh, not East Pakistan, The Netherlands, not Holland, Thailamd, not Siam, Etc
Colonialism perfectly sums up the arrogant attitude that you can decide for them what another country will be called.
So Americans/Irish/English/Scots/Welsh/Australians are all being "colonialist" when they refer to Wien as 'Vienna', Čechy as 'Bohemia', Abertawe as 'Swansea' and La Manche as 'The English Channel'?
Do you know how ridiculous you sound?
Sadly, this kind of illogical and undiscerning paranoia has invaded school curricula and universities as an overreaction to imperialism. It's part of the "hermeneutic of suspicion"; behind everything lurks an insidious evil intent, whether it is self-serving power and a will to dominate others, racism, colonialism, misogyny, or whatever. Those things exist, absolutely, but minds steeped in the hermeneutic of suspicion have one track minds. They read this threat into nearly everything.
Curiously, they don't seem to notice it in the workings of the very hermeneutic itself.
> Do you know how ridiculous you sound?
Do you? Has Vienna or Swansea asked you to change how you refer to them? If they did, would you? If not, why not?
According to your logic, the Germans should harangue the Azerbaijanis till they change "Almaniya" (the word for Germany in their language, which probably derives from the French "Allemagne") to "Deutschland".
The Finns call Germany "Saksa", those Finno-imperialists!
The Poles call it "Niemcy".
Exactly. And in the case of "Niemcy" above (which ultimately comes from the proto-Slavic "*němьcь", meaning "mute"), it would be ridiculous to claim that Poles have some kind of colonial relationship with the Germans. If anything, the reverse has been true in history: it was the Germans who engaged in colonial politics toward Poland, including the enactment of cultural policies that were designed to ethnically cleanse and germanize the country.
Yes, Germany could request that all of the above rename Germany in their respective languages and at least the EU nations would.
This has already happened quite recently as the Netherlands requested that countries moved to translations of Netherlands when referring to their country (as opposed to Holland and translations thereof) and all the EU nations did. This was in 2019.
So if Germany so desired, they could make those requests and they would be honoured. In a few decades, the old names would be as antiquated as Rhodesia, Burma, or Zaire are now.
Interesting. Do Brits (still) call the inhabitants of the Netherlands the Dutch like Americans do?
If so, what does the Netherlands think of that?