My watch list
my.chemeurope.com  
Login  

Radioactive quackery




  Radioactive quackery refers to various products sold during the early 20th century, after the discovery of radioactivity, which promised radioactivity as a cure for various ills. It is now well known that radioactivity can actually be harmful and cause, among other things, cancer.

Notable examples

  • Radithor, a solution of radium salts claimed to have curative properties (the industrialist Eben Byers was poisoned by it)
  • Many brands of toothpaste were laced with radium that was claimed to make teeth shine whiter
  • Bath waters were advertised as being "highly radioactive"
  • "Radioactive pens"
  • Revigator pots, which added radon to drinking water
  • Fluoroscopes used for shoe fitting (really a case of X-ray quackery)

See also

  • Electrical quackery
  • Snake oil
  • Quackery
 
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Radioactive_quackery". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.
Your browser is not current. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 does not support some functions on Chemie.DE