Depends on what you mean “before they knew what radio activity was”. They did horrible things with it before they knew about the health effects.
Like putting Radium in pills you swallow:
Or even in suppositories which are even worse:
They put thorium in toothpaste:
They used massive powered X-Ray machines with no protection in shoe store so you could see how your feet fit in shoes:
They put radium in paint then put it on pocket watch faces so they glow, but the workers didn’t know the effects of radium and all died of massive cancer of the mouth, jaw, and throat. I’m not putting picture here for that. Google those at your own risk.
One of the early pros working with radioactivity was Marie Curie. She died of aplastic anemia in 1934. Her research notes are still radioactive. Her lab was said to be radioactive as well, yet it was not decontaminated until 1991.
In Illinois, employees began asking for compensation for their medical and dental bills as early as 1927 but were refused by management. The demand for money by sick and dying former employees continued into the mid-1930s before a suit was brought before the Illinois Industrial Commission (IIC). In 1937, five women found attorney Leonard Grossman who would represent them in front of the commission. Grossman took the case without receiving pay as the women were too poor due to inability to work. The case was handled at Catherine Donahue’s home, a woman involved who was too sick to travel. In the spring of 1938 the IIC ruled in favor of the women, but by then, Radium Dial had closed and moved to New York, and the IIC refused to cross state boundaries for the women’s payout. The IIC did retain a $10,000 deposit left by Radium Dial when it disclosed to the IIC that they could not find any insurance to cover the cost of indemnifying the company against employee suits. The attorney representing the interests of Radium Dial appealed hoping to get the verdict overturned. Radium Dial appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and on October 23, 1939, the court decided not to hear the appeal, and the lower ruling was upheld. Some of the women received no payout and by the time the matter was officially settled by the supreme court, Catherine Donahue was dead.[24]
For a brief few years Kent cigarettes has asbestos filters.
From March 1952 until at least May 1956, however, the Micronite filter in Kent cigarettes contained compressed blue asbestos within the crimped crepe paper, which is the most carcinogenic type of asbestos.
I do wonder how many of the pills etc were effectively fake, radium was expensive, so a lot may have used homeopathic amounts. A lot of cosmetics today still do that, add infinitesimally small amounts of the latest fashionable ingredient, so they can say it contains it.
Depends on what you mean “before they knew what radio activity was”. They did horrible things with it before they knew about the health effects.
Like putting Radium in pills you swallow:
Or even in suppositories which are even worse:
They put thorium in toothpaste:
They used massive powered X-Ray machines with no protection in shoe store so you could see how your feet fit in shoes:
They put radium in paint then put it on pocket watch faces so they glow, but the workers didn’t know the effects of radium and all died of massive cancer of the mouth, jaw, and throat. I’m not putting picture here for that. Google those at your own risk.
One of the early pros working with radioactivity was Marie Curie. She died of aplastic anemia in 1934. Her research notes are still radioactive. Her lab was said to be radioactive as well, yet it was not decontaminated until 1991.
https://www.openculture.com/2023/11/marie-curies-research-papers-are-still-radioactive-a-century-later.html
The radium paint one is particularly bad because they told the workers (mostly women) to give their brush a fine tip using their mouth.
And they were fucked up for life due to it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls
And the company was probably like “well how could we have known?” and probably faced zero consequences in true American fashion.
Pretty much
And the company know pretty well the dangers, the men who worked with the material used protection against the radiation.
Don’t forget Marie Curie died from it and her documents are so irridated they have to be quarantined.
https://www.businessinsider.com/marie-curie-radioactive-papers-2015-8
For a brief few years Kent cigarettes has asbestos filters.
I do wonder how many of the pills etc were effectively fake, radium was expensive, so a lot may have used homeopathic amounts. A lot of cosmetics today still do that, add infinitesimally small amounts of the latest fashionable ingredient, so they can say it contains it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radithor