Letters Received to Editor, June 20, 1925

Radium Laboratories WM. J. A. BAILEY, Director June 20, 1935 Research Laboratories and Office Consulting 336 M a i n SPreet Production RADIUM DEATHS East U.S.A. STATES To the Editor:- RADIUM OORP, Considerable publicity has appeared the past few days in the papers with regard to so-called #Radium Deaths* at a plant in Orange, N. J., where the women use luminous paint on watch dials. As there is no basis for these statements we wish to present the faots to you with respect to the use of radium internally. That several women have died in the course of several years in a plant that has employed several hundred women is no proof of the harmfulness of radium. The same percentage of women probably die in the same time in every plant of any kind out of the same number of women employed. We have no connection whatever with the plant at Orange, except- ing that we are in the radium businese and supply ragium for use both internally and esternally. As the writer has had many yeare exper- 2ence in this field he considers that an authoritative statement re- garding radium should be printed by you to balance the absolutely ri- ridulous and untrue statements that have already been made by doctors with little or no experience in this field. We have for sometime been supplying physicians throughout this country and abroad with a radioactive solution known as radium water. Over 300 doctors are already on our books and practically all of them have been using radium water in a large number of asses. All of them have repestedly reported excellent results in serious conditions that do not yield to any other kind of treatment. The Amerioan Medical Association has endorsed solutions as thers peutic agenoies as will be noted in the New and Non-Official Remedies issued by the Association, This great organization comprising more than half of the doctors of the country ie certainly not giving its official sanction to internal radium treatment if it were harmful in any way. As a matter of fact the Amerioan Medical Association will not pass a radium preparation as of sufficient strength unless it con- tains at least two micrograms of radium, or the equivalent thereof, as a daily dose. This is more radium than one will find in an armfull of watch dials. We find the following statement in New and Non-Official Remedies published by the American Medical Association: "Daily administration of radium emanation solution containing 1.5 millicuries gives results in selected cases of arthritis deformens, # On this basis a person taking this daily dose over a period of one month would have taken in- to the system more radio-activity than any women could get from paint- ing all the watch diale ehe could handle during her whole lifetime, Yet the London Radium Institute has treated hundreds of patients with this dosage for periods of many months and report a large percentage of cures. Hot Springs, Saratoga, Mt. Olements and al the other well-known spes and springs of this country and Europe contain radium in very ap- preciable amounts.