Marie Curie’s 120-Year-Old Notebooks Still Emit Radiation, Stored for 1,500 More Years in Lead Boxes
Updated
Updated · spacedaily.com · Aug 19
Marie Curie’s 120-Year-Old Notebooks Still Emit Radiation, Stored for 1,500 More Years in Lead Boxes
3 articles · Updated · spacedaily.com · Aug 19
Summary
More than 120 years after Marie Curie wrote them, her lab notebooks still emit radiation strongly enough that readers must sign a risk waiver, wear protective gear and use lead-lined storage.
Radium-226 contamination persists because the isotope has a roughly 1,600-year half-life; Curie handled radium salts and radioactive dust for years while isolating radium from about seven tonnes of pitchblende.
The Bibliothèque nationale de France keeps the notebooks, letters and other Curie papers under conditions closer to a radiation lab than a reading room, though scholars can still consult them.
Marie Curie isolated one-tenth of a gram of pure radium chloride in 1902, won Nobel Prizes in 1903 and 1911, and died in 1934 of aplastic anemia linked to long radiation exposure.