alt Hacker News>Radium watches, on the other hand, were quite dangerous.
Citation needed. Radium paint was hazardous to workers making the watches, but alpha particles aren't getting through the crystal or movement and there's not a huge risk to wearing them.
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I went to our local museum carrying my tritium marker to see if I could induce some trails on their radiation cloud chamber. Boy was I disappointed that I could not create a single trace from it. The plastic encasing seems to protect pretty well (like 100%) from beta radiation.
Ya, there are lots of "radioactive" glowing things safely used every day. But people get scared when things glow green because Hollywood tells them to fear glowing things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium_radioluminescence#Smal...
Probably right. I was thinking about the factories, in retrospect. I believe that many of the workers ingested it.
Also, back then, they had radium philters (tonics).