This will tell you definitively if a piece is radioactive. The easiest way to tell if a watch is radioactive is to pick up a simple Geiger counter. Radium-based paint was banned in the 1960s and all of the paint was phased out a decade later. Plastic crystals can often exhibit a burn-in from the paint. They tend to “burn” over time, turning the hands a dull brown.
Radium retains its fluorescence for a long time and many radium dials might still have a charge in them. What do radium watches look like?Ī radium watch may still be radioactive years after manufacture. Eventually, scientists and medical professionals realized that these workers’ illnesses were being caused by internal contamination from the radium they ingested. Many of these workers developed bone cancer, usually in their jaws. In the body, radium acts similar to calcium, so the radium that workers ingested was deposited into their bones. In doing this, they often swallowed some of the radioactive paint. To create fine tips on their paint brushes for small surfaces, many radium dial painters licked the bristles of their paintbrushes. During the production of radium dials, many workers who painted clock or instrument dials with radium developed cancer. If radium is ingested or inhaled, the radiation emitted by the radionuclide can interact with cells and damage them. If it is inhaled or swallowed, radium is dangerous because there is no shielding inside the body. It emits alpha, beta, and gamma radiation.
Any luminous watch made before 1970 is almost definitely coated in some amount of radium.Īccording to the EPA, radioactive antiques are still highly dangerous and were made more so by safety failures in the painting process: Rolex, Omega, Patek Philippe, and any major watchmaker used radium on their dials. Radium became more popular in the intervening years and almost every watch between 1917 and the early 1970s used a form of radium paint. These watches, called Trench Watches, had luminous faces for reading in the dark trenches along both sides of the battlefield and often featured big, bold numerals and hands to maximize the radium’s surface area. Radium was commonly used on many watches built during World War I. Read the book Radium Girls for more info on this topic.
Horrible things happened to watchmakers who used the material in painting hands and numerals and devasting diseases like jaw and stomach cancer often plagued assembly-line workers in the days when radium was still in popular use. By John Biggs how to, lume, radium, Rolexīefore we begin, please remember that radium is a dangerously radioactive substance and repeated exposure is very dangerous.
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