The Radium City.”
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We are in the habit of speaking of Pittsburgh as “The Iron City.” We sometimes call it “The Steel City.” It may also justly called “The Radium City.” William J. Holland, Director, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh. From Dr. Holland’s remarks at the May 26, 1921 University of Pittsburgh Convocation to confer an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Laws on Marie Curie. Radium CITY A History of America’s first nuclear Industry By Joel O. Lubenau & Edward R. Landa © 2019 Joel O. Lubenau Published 2019 on-line by Senator John Heinz History Center 1212 Smallman St. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15222 https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org/publications All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known, or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. A catalogue copy of this book is in the Senator John Heinz History Center, Thomas and Katherine Detre Library and Archives. 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Figures: Notes and Credits..…………………………………...…..4 Foreword by J. Samuel Walker…………………………………....6 Introduction.…………………………………………………….....8 Chapter 1: Vanadium……………………………………………..11 Chapter 2: American Radium…………………………………….28 Chapter 3: Paradox Valley………………………………….…….37 Chapter 4: Canonsburg……………………………...………....…53 Chapter 5: Pittsburgh…………………………………….……….60 Chapter 6: Joseph M. Flannery Versus the U. S. Government…...71 Chapter 7: Byproducts….……………………………….…....…..80 Chapter 8: Radium City……………………………………....…..87 Chapter 9: Radium Dangers……………………………….........100 Chapter 10: Legacies………………………………………...….115 Chapter 11: Markers………………………………………...…..130 Acknowledgements……………………………...……………...133 Chapter Notes…………………..………………………….…....137 Bibliography………………………………………………....….171 About the Authors…………………………………………....…186 3 FIGURES: NOTES & CREDITS Figures may be subject to copyright and ownership restrictions. Some figures were cropped from larger images. Figure captions include credit keys as follows: KEY CREDIT ACS1 Reprinted with permission from “Radioactivity and the University of Pittsburgh,” Journal of Chemical Education, Copyright October 1, 1945, American Chemical Society. ACS2 Reprinted with permission from “Pittsburgh’s contribution to radium recovery,” Journal of Chemical Education, Copyright June 1, 1950, American Chemical Society. BAHS Bridgeville Area Historical Society. CCT From E. N. R. Grigg, The Trail of the Invisible Light, 1965, Courtesy of Charles C. Thomas Publisher, Ltd., Springfield, Illinois. CLP Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction or usage prohibited. CPP College of Physicians of Philadelphia. CU William Brown Meloney papers, 1920-1943, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University in the City of New York. DU Legacy Center Archives, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia. HHC1 Rudy Brothers Company Photographs, MSP 278, Thomas and Katherine Detre Library and Archives, Senator John Heinz History Center. HHC2 Photographer: Brian Butko, Thomas and Katherine Detre Library and Archives, Senator John Heinz History Center. HHC3 Louis Fenn Vogt Papers and Photographs, 1921-1952, MSS 861, Thomas and Katherine Detre Library and Archives, Senator John Heinz History Center. HHC4 A. D. Riley Photograph Albums, 1910-c.1921, PSS 68, Thomas and Katherine Detre Library and Archives, Senator John Heinz History Center. HHC5 Holland Family Papers, 1747-1933, MSS 168, Thomas and Katherine Detre Library and Archives, Senator John Heinz History Center. HML Hagley Museum & Library. IAWC Interpretative Association of Western Colorado. JOL Collection of Joel O. Lubenau, Lititz, PA. JTH Collection of James T. Herron, Canonsburg PA. LOC Library of Congress. LU Special Collections, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. 4 NA Newspapers.com/Ancestry.com. NIST National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST. NMNSH Courtesy of the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. NYBG The LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden. ORAU Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Health Physics Historical Instrumentation Collection. PPG Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. PTM Miller Library, Pennsylvania Trolley Museum. QU James Douglas, V28P-57, Queen’s Picture Collection, Queen’s University Archives, Kingston, Ontario. RHS Rimrocker Historical Society of Western Montrose County. RU Harrison Martland Papers, Box 4, Folder 7, RBHS-Special Collections, Rutgers University Libraries. SC Creator, Stahlberg, Eric, College Archives, Smith College (Northhampton, Massachusetts). SHI1 William Haynes Portrait Collection. Courtesy of Science History Institute. SHI2 Vanadium Corporation of American Photograph Collection. Courtesy of Science History Institute. THF The Collections of The Henry Ford. Benson Ford Research Center. UP1 Aimee Obidzinski, University of Pittsburgh. UP2 University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. USCS U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Mines and Mining. Radium: Hearing before the Committee on Mines and Mining on S. 4405, 63rd Cong., 2nd sess., February 10-24, 1914. USDOE U.S. Department of Energy, DOE/EM-0319 WPI Wark Photography, Inc., Pueblo, CO. 5 FOREWORD J. Samuel Walker In Radium City, Joel Lubenau and Edward Landa trace two prominent and intersecting themes. The first is a little-known but important chapter in the local history of Pittsburgh and the surrounding region of southwestern Pennsylvania. The other is the history of the early radium industry in the United States. The production and sale of radium began with wildly inflated hopes about the benefits the element provided that gradually gave way to recognition of the serious health hazards it presented. For obvious reasons, Pittsburgh earned its nicknames of “Iron City,” “Steel City,” and, during the 1970s, “City of Champions.” But the origins of the title of “Radium City” that it acquired in the early twentieth century are far less apparent, and Lubenau and Landa explain clearly how that label came about. It was the result of the entrepreneurial skills and daring of two brothers raised in Pittsburgh, James J. and Joseph M. Flannery. They abandoned their family’s undertaking business to build two industries virtually from scratch. The first was the mining, milling, and smelting of vanadium, a key ingredient in making lighter and stronger steel. The Flannerys founded a firm, the American Vanadium Company, that was headquartered in Pittsburgh and housed downtown in an elegant five-story building. The Flannerys’ experience with vanadium production was a prelude to the formation of the Standard Chemical Company, whose purpose was to find, mine, extract, and market radium. When their sister was diagnosed with cancer, Joseph Flannery undertook a sustained but ultimately futile attempt to combat her illness by acquiring radium in Europe, the only source of supply at the time. The tiny amount of radium that was available in the United States convinced him to establish a company to produce the element in sufficient quantities to meet demand for medical and other applications. Radium had been first identified as an element in 1898 by Marie and Pierre Curie. The news of the Curies’ discovery set off a wave of articles, books, and lectures that claimed an abundance of potential uses for the new element, some realistic and many others fanciful. Physicians quickly recognized that radium could be an important advance in treating cancer, but the legitimate benefits were soon overshadowed by many indiscriminate and ill-informed applications, such as injections or consumption of radium solutions for acne, sexual disfunction, and heart disease. The radium craze greatly increased demand for the element, and Joseph Flannery’s company built a state-of-the-art plant in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, to extract the element from ore. The Canonsburg facility succeeded in substantially increasing the supply of radium in the United States and abroad. The risks of exposure to radium became evident only gradually, in part because the most serious dangers are insidious. Radium is an “internal emitter” that causes its greatest harm if taken into the body, including severe anemia and other life-threatening afflictions. During the 1920s, the hazards had become apparent enough that professional societies strongly recommended the adoption of protective measures against the improper use of radium. 6 By that time, the Standard Chemical Company, largely because of competition from cheaper suppliers, had ceased production of radium. Eventually, it was sold at a fraction of its former value. Radium City is a history of the technical, scientific, business, social, public health, and personal aspects of a once-thriving industry. As such, it makes for an engaging story that the authors admirably bring to light. J. Samuel Walker is the author of Permissible Dose: A History of Radiation Protection in the Twentieth Century (University of California Press, 2000) and other books on nuclear power safety. 7 Introduction In 1921, Marie Curie, recipient of Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry and co- discoverer of radium, visited the United States to receive a gift of one gram of radium from the women of America. Costing $100,000, the gift was presented to her by President Harding at the White House in a ceremony widely covered by the press. The Standard Chemical Company (SCC), a Pittsburgh enterprise founded by James J. and Joseph M. Flannery, produced the radium. After receiving