RSH Data & Documents

"The Health Effects of Low-Level Radiation"
:Jim Muckerheide

Occupationally Exposed Populations

Marie Curie

Marie Curie is often referred to as a "radiation victim." With an estimate of cumulative dose of many 1000s of rem, she died at age 66, with aplastic anemia.

Starting in 1898, she spent 4 years in a shed, while in her early 30s, separating radium from the residue of uranium ore. She worked eventually with "a warm glow in the evening," sufficient to read by.

Dr. Curie worked with radium until 1914, when she saw and met the need for diagnostic radiology at the front lines in France, creating a "radiologic car." She often worked 16-18 hour days, sometimes for days at a time, manually manipulating the x-ray devices, "with the apparatus in action surrounded by a mysterious halo." She fitted 20 "radiologic cars", started 200 field hospital X-ray rooms, and trained 150 technicians, receiving additional 1000s of rem in the process.

After the war she continued her radium work at the Curie Institute of Radium in Paris, until her death in 1934, which was undoubtedly influenced (not necessarily "hastened"), by her radiation exposure.