RADIUM SCARCITY.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 2498, 12 June 1920, Page 2

RADIUM SCARCITY.

FEAR OF WORLD’S SUPPLY*" GIVING OUT. Fours are entertained that the world’s supply of radium is giving out, says the “Daily Mail.” Tin’s mysterious mineral', which is more and more needed every week by men of science and by doctors, is growing harder and harder to find. 'like ores out of which it is extracted by long and costly processes are in many cases not turning out trumps. Some of them, of which much was expected, are proving valueless; and, as it takes scores of tons of ore to yield a gramme, the amount of vain toil may be imagined. Radium is now worth £16,000 a gramme (there are 32 grammes to the ounce troy), and may soon rise far beyond this price ii richer ores are not discovered.

The Radium Institute, which inherited a certain amount of our huge supply acquired during the war, is preparing’ it for use in medical research by a strange method. First a solution of radium is made. Tins very weak solution gives off radium emanations, just as the original substance. These emanations though, of course, invisible, and only to be detected by delicate apparatus, are then bottled, literally bottled. Tinv glass phials are put in contact with the solution and then corked. When thus charged, they are sent off to any doctor who has an approved case. The efficacy of the phial lasts about a wn-ek. These curious unia nations, either front the radium or its solution, will escape through every substance except lead. liie activity of these emanations, or whatever word, is ustd, is such that a morsel ot radium left unenclosed by lead in any one room ol a house, can be detected by due apparatus in another.