eli5 How come if highly radioactive radium was on watches that the wearers didn’t succumb to radiation poisoning at the wrist?
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Radium emits alpha particles. They have very little penetrating power. Your skin is actually a sufficient barrier to stop it.
Alpha radiation is basically only dangerous if you ingest it. At that point it starts irradiating your internal organs directly. You’ve probably heard of the “radium girls” who worked painting the watches by hand and all died horrible painful deaths. The most significant issue for them was the standard practice was to lick the brush to form a point. This resulted in ingesting a fairly high amount of radium. Besides ingesting any alpha emitter in general being bad in the case of radium specifically the human body can’t distinguish it from calcium. As a result it gets incorporated permanently into your skeleton. This results in long term irradiation as well as brittle bones because it can’t actually do the same job as calcium.
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