Fully Contaminated
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Everything Else
TaraDeS — 6 months ago(October 02, 2025 05:07 PM)
Fully Contaminated
Toothpaste with thorium, creams with radium, healing water with alpha emitters:
In the first third of the 20th century, a white upper class poisoned itself with
its own ideal of purity. This obsession continues to this day.
A hundred years ago, purity cost 75 Reichspfennigs
. It sits on the pharmacy shelf, the beige tube with red lettering:
"Doramad Radioactive Toothpaste"
, reads the packaging from the Auergesellschaft in Berlin. It's supposed to awaken vitality, strengthen the immune system and promise a smile — whiter than any other. Teeth not just clean, but sparkling clean. Literally. The reason: Thorium-X, a radioactive alpha emitter related to radium, contained in the paste — and was massaged into the teeth and gums with a brush once in the morning and once in the evening.
What sounds absurd today was the seal of approval back then. Wealthy Germans bought Doramad not despite the radiation, but precisely because of it. Radiation was a promise: of progress, prosperity and white purity.
The discovery of the 88th element by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898 triggered a veritable hype in the first third of the 20th century. Radium was considered a miracle substance. It glows and emits heat — an almost mystical phenomenon. At that time, radiation was like an energy that promised everything. It could prolong life, cure diseases and rejuvenate the body. Radium quickly found its way from science and medicine into commercial use — and thus into people's everyday lives.
In Cottbus, chocolate manufacturers Burk & Braun mixed radium into their bars, advertising it as a sweet fountain of youth. Klinghoff & Korte from Heidelberg sell radium lozenges to suck on for combating fatigue. In Bad Kreuznach and Oberschlema, spa guests wallow in radium-rich water, which is supposed to help with and against everything. Radium can also be found in underwear, bras and condoms, sold with the promise of better shape, increased potency and vitality.
In Paris
, the Tho-Radia company began in 1933 with an entire range of radium-containing beauty products: creams, powders, lipstick and blush. With a mixture of radium bromide and thorium chloride, they promised to smooth wrinkles, close pores and break down fat. The goal was radiant white skin, a purity that went deeper than meets the eye. White superiority that came from within. On the advertising posters, the Tho-Radia girl greets you, pale, blonde, aloof — illuminated from below, as if her glow were from another world. From a better, whiter one.
White is more than a colour.
For some, it's a promise; for others, it's ideology. In any case, it's a means of distinction. Purity and whiteness merged into a new elitist aesthetic at that time. And radioactivity became a tool of white power fantasies. Those who can afford it radiate. Literally. And thus demonstrate their membership in the white elite. Radium is the attribute of a society convinced it can conquer nature. That controls everything with science and promises to greatly extend life, even to cheat its own finiteness.
And no one asked what it means when a luminous substance enters the body. And stays there. Thorium and radium are chemically similar to calcium. The body can't tell the difference and deposits the toxic metals where calcium actually belongs: in bones and teeth. There they stay, far longer than a lifetime. Radium-226 has a half-life of 1,600 years, thorium-232 of fourteen billion years. As the metals decay, they emit alpha rays - tiny, short-range particles that strike cell nuclei, destroy DNA and crumble bones from within. This leads to jaw necrosis, leukemia and organ failure. That wasn't advertised. These were the unforeseen consequences.
In the USA
, a drink caused a rethink. Radithor, distilled water infused with radium and mesothorium, marketed as a
"cure for the living dead"
was supposed to relieve fatigue, impotence and general weakness after WWI. Radithor was expensive and sought after, yet over 400,000 bottles were sold in the USA.
Eben Byers, a wealthy industrialist and amateur golf champion, was something of a promotional figure for the healing water at the time. For years, after a sports injury, he drank up to three bottles of Radithor daily, so convinced was he of its effectiveness. He's said to have consumed more than 1,400 bottles in total. Today, the limit for radium in drinking water is 0.1 becquerel per liter. A small bottle of Radithor had a concentration of 37,000 becquerel.
When Byers finally developed cancer after two and a half years of intensive consumption, his teeth fell out, parts of his jaw dissolved and he died in agony in 1932. The authorities ordered his body to be buried in a lead coffin for safety reasons. The radioactive drink was banned.
The fate of the so-called Radium Girls also moved the US-American public for many years. Radium Girls – this is the name given to a group of female factory workers who, for decades, painted dials for clocks and measuring -
TaraDeS — 6 months ago(October 02, 2025 05:57 PM)
soapbox original gangster October 02, 2025 07:21 PM
Member since October 31, 2021
radioactivity is some serious bad stuff.
the first black/white picture reminds me of the movie posters from that time.
i get a Fritz Lang " Metropolis" vibe from that image.
#MeToo. -
TaraDeS — 6 months ago(October 02, 2025 06:35 PM)
./.. October 02, 2025 08:12 PM
Member since July 18, 2023
Hi there, Juan Kerr.
That's absolutely not funny.
Juan Kerr aka Juanita aka sicko stalker Sicky ∂³∑x² wasn't just annoying.
🤪
It was even not the original Juan Kerr, who left Filmboards in 2022.
However, certainly not me…only two samples.
Here Is Germany
https://www.filmboards.com/board/10037773/
Tara Tara Tara Tara
https://www.filmboards.com/board/10083047/ -
TaraDeS — 6 months ago(October 02, 2025 06:52 PM)
Fo Jizzle October 02, 2025 08:33 PM
Member since November 5, 2018
Worse then leaded paint and gas even, which they knew for years was causing serious health conditions before they removed it. Now it's micro plastics.
Hmmm, I understand what you mean and basically agree with you.
But I have a little problem with the term
"they"
in this context.
It implies that the government deliberately poisons the citizens.
Regarding the radium and thorium
"they"
really didn't know the danger.
Yep, greed and the longing for health or beauty made and make people careless and reckless.
Careless and reckless we threw our trash in the oceans, across the world.
I've just read a long article about rotting trash barrels, partly radioactive trash. Nothing new, but it gave me goosebumps. And somehow, I was reminded of the Iberian orcas, who attack sailing ships (no idea if there's a connection).
Edit to add
Article I was talking about.
What causes the dead Zones around these Barrels?
Thousands upon thousands of barrels of toxic waste lie on the seabed. Some leak substances that kill all life.
https://www.spektrum.de/news/umweltverschmutzung-was-verursacht-die-todeszonen-um-diese-faesser/2288789
September 30, 2025 -
TaraDeS — 6 months ago(October 02, 2025 07:36 PM)
Fo Jizzle October 02, 2025 09:18 PM
Member since November 5, 2018
Barrels that should of been properly sealed, lowered down deep into bedrock and capped off with a lot of concrete.
Yep, you name it…but those barrels weren't.
Well, Putin just threatened to attack Ukrainian nuclear power plants (again).
Perhaps we won't have to worry about rotting barrels anymore. ☻ -
TaraDeS — 6 months ago(October 02, 2025 08:13 PM)
Fo Jizzle October 02, 2025 10:02 PM
Member since November 5, 2018
Really? Isn’t the reason Russia gave up the Ukraine is because of Chernobyl?
That was a nice
'side effect'
, getting rid of the responsibility for Chernobyl.
No, Ukraine surrendered their nuclear weapons under the assurance of their inviolable sovereignty. -
TaraDeS — 5 months ago(October 05, 2025 05:34 PM)
by /.ㅤ October 05, 2025 06:19 PM
Member since January 25, 2022
Fascinating. Strange how the first instinct after discovering radiation was
"Let's start drinking this glowing ****!"
True, from today's perspective it seems completely crazy. The people simply didn't know back then. Monsieur Curie always carried a piece of radium in his shirt pocket to show it to
'glowing'
fans (including himself). Further back in time, wine was often
spiced
with lead or mercury. That was probably the cause of Balzac's untimely death, rather than his excessive coffee consumption.
As Kirk already noted, we continue to devastate our environment, even though we (now!) know better.
Well, many more examples show that we (humans) are crazy…back then and now.