While scientists and the owners of the U.S. Radium was used in watch paint beginning around 1910 well before the danger of radioactivity began to be understood.Īfter World War I and through the 1920s, radium-painted dials became very popular for both watches and clocks.Ĭompanies that produced radium-painted watch and clock dials, and other instruments typically hired young women to do the painting, and generally failed to disclose to them the potential hazards of working with the radioactive material. You can also make an educated guess concerning the age of the watch the older the watch, the more likely it is to contain radioactive material. These instruments will be able to pick up the radiation of a vintage radium-painted watch, but will not be able to detect other, non-radioactive glow-in-the-dark compounds, or tritium-painted compounds. The use of a Geiger counter or dosimeter to measure any present radiation levels. The “<25” label signified that the watch included less than 25 millicuries of radioactive tritium. Similarly, a watch featuring tritium in its paint during this time would also be marked with two small Ts, or T<25 labels near the same six o’clock marker. Beginning around the 1950s or ’60s, watches dials began to be labeled this way in order to distinguish the element used in its markers. One is to look for an “R” or “Ra” located on the dial below the six o’clock marker. There are a couple ways to identify a radium-painted watch:
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