Remember, radium will only be harmful if it is inhaled or ingested. If you found out that your watch has a radium dial, you don’t have to panic and dispose of it immediately. What Should to Do If Your Watch Has Radium Dial It takes thousands of years before the radium will completely decay. After a few years or decades, radium dials may lose their glow but it doesn’t mean that they’re no longer radioactive. Another quick way to determine if the watch has radium is if it has a faint glow in the dark and does not charge up in sunlight. Low radiation levels (complying with the Atomic Energy Commission regulations) are indicated with an exclamation point with the dot below the marker at 6 o’clock, or with an underline on the dial if the watch was produced in 1963 onwards. Some additional symbols on the dial as they indicate the level of radium present in the watch. Most Rolex watches that used tritium will have the symbols “SWISS T<25” or “T Swiss T” under the 6 o’clock marker. Although safer than Radium, it is still radioactive. After that point, Rolex started using Tritium instead of Radium. “R” or “Ra” on the dial may also indicate that it has radium.įor Rolex and Tudor watches, Radium was the standard luminous material until 1963. If it is Swiss but is made after 1998, then it probably used LumiNova already on its dial. If your watch is quite vintage and is Swiss (produced before the 1960s in Switzerland), then it is highly probable that it comes with radio-luminescent paint. If you don’t have one, there may be some indications on the watch dial. The most reliable way to know if a watch has radium (or other radioactive material) is through the use of a Geiger counter.
RADIUM DIAL WATCH HOW TO
How to Tell If a Watch Has Radium Image Credit: Jafd88 via Creative Commons Because of the grave risks posed by radium, watchmakers stopped using it on watch and clock dials by the 1970s. In addition, radium may also cause lung cancer when it decays to radon gas (a powerful carcinogen). After a few years, many of them developed bone cancer. In the case of Radium Girls, they have swallowed little amounts of radioactive paint as they licked their paintbrushes. Once ingested or even only inhaled, the emitted radiation may interact with the human cells and then damage them. Radium emits alpha, beta, and gamma radiation, which is why it is classified as highly radioactive. Unfortunately, it took years and decades before people realized that it has harmful, fatal even, effects on the body. Yet, because of its glow that many found fascinating at that time, radium was also used in many everyday objects such as dinnerware, paints, and even in drinking water.
Radium is a radioactive element first discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898. Radio-Luminescent paint is composed of zinc sulfide and radium salts. Health Risks of Radium Dials Image Credit: Arma95 via Creative Commons 3 What Should to Do If Your Watch Has Radium Dial.Below we’ll summarize how to figure out if your watch has Radium or other radioactive materials such as Tritium. However, if you are buying vintage watches, those made prior to the early 1960s you could still end up with a watch that has Radium. The best luminous watches now use safe materials such as Seiko’s Lumibrite, Luminox’s Light Technology (LLT), or Rolex’s in-house Chromalight technology. However, this doesn’t remove all the health risks caused by the use of radium. Hence, by 1930, dial painters stopped using their mouths to shape their brushes. The term has become quite popular because these young women used to point their brushes using their tongues, which later on resulted in the recognition of radium-induced osteonecrosis as an occupational disease. They are more commonly known as the Radium Girls. Mostly, young women were painting the radium dials. Back in the early 1900s, radium was mixed with paint (producing radio-luminescent paint) to make the elements in the watch dial, such as hands and hour markers, glow in the dark.
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