Evans 6, 4, 3 and Rajewsky 7, 2, 1 accuracy of measurement has reached a high standard, and Evans 6 can measure as little as 0♲ microgrammes in a living person. Study of them suggests that in the earlier years the difficulty of measuring minute quantities of radium in living persons, and tiny radon concentrations in their breath, led to inaccuracy and some conflicting results. The literature on radium poisoning is now extensive, dealing with luminous watch dial painters, drinkers of radium water nostrums, patients given intravenous injections of radium salts as a medicament, and the hazards of mining and refining radium ore. The 54-year-old Park Ridge, Illinois resident had worked in the 1920s at Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, Illinois, which hired women to paint watch and clock dials with radium-laced, glow-in-the-dark paint. On August 25, 1959, Beatrice Workman died of radium poisoning. The literature on radium poisoning is now extensive, dealing with luminous watch dial painters, drinkers of radium water nostrums, patients given intravenous injections of radium salts as a medicament, and the hazards of mining and refining radium ore. radium poisoning took the lives of thousands of female factory workers during the 20th century. The first two probabilities can best be assessed by those with special knowledge of aerial attack and high explosives, so that this paper will be concerned mainly with a review of the literature on radium poisoning and inhalation of dust. Less well known are the many therapeutic procedures that employed significant doses of radium during the 1920's and early 1930's.Much is known of the long-term. This danger is a complex of several probabilities-the probability of a bomb dropping near by, the probability that the radium will be dispersed, that persons will ingest or inhale it, and that sufficient will be absorbed to produce injury. Radium poisoning of young girls painting watch and clock dials was among the best publicized radiation tragedies preceding the nuclear age. The danger from naked radium has recently become a matter of importance because of the possibility that, in the absence of effective precautions, bombing might destroy a radium container and scatter the radium element.