Cabinet of curiosities: the strange fashion of radioactive dishes…

If in due time the death of Marie Curie was not enough to imprint on people’s minds the dangers inherent in the radioactivity, the use of the atomic bomb during the Second World War, followed by the nuclear tests of the Cold War and then the tragedy of Chernobyl have since largely justified the creation of the term ” radiophobia “. Most sane people today have normally been taught to be wary of radiation, to dread the frenetic crackle of a racing Geiger counter, so much so that we may have become overly suspicious of radioactivity, forgetting gladly that this manifests itself, certainly to a lesser extent, all around us everyday. Would you, for example, eat from a dish or drink from a glass containinguranium radioactive? For a brief period of history, this is exactly the fashion in which our Western societies indulged.

Uralin: a radioactive glass

With a hue ranging from amber yellow to intense apple green, ouraline takes its color uranium oxide, or often diuranate (a anions of the radioactive element), which enter into its composition. This colored glass, which can be found in many forms – jewelry, table service, or even decorative object – could easily go unnoticed among the many crystal goblets and Art Deco vases adorning the tables and shelves of antique dealers. However, there is a very simple and quite spectacular way to identify it: place the object in a dark room, illuminate it with an ultraviolet beam, and you should then see it begin to shine with an intense green glow. while the excitement of electrons in the glass causes its fluorescence.

The origin of the name uralin » remains uncertain to this day, but since its invention, this uranium-enriched glass has acquired another name that collectors willingly use: « petroleum jelly ” Where ” glass of Vaseline “, in reference to the cream from which it borrows the color (at the time of a light yellow slightly green) and, sometimes, the oily aspect. Throughout history and the brands that have appropriated it, this material also responded to the name of uran glass, lemon glass, custard, florentine, jasmine, mustard, golden green and many more. Depression glass, produced during the economic crisis of the 1930s, used oxide of iron to enhance its green tint, while Burmese glass uses colloidal gold to achieve its milky appearance, delicate variations of cream and pale pink.

But if you argue with purists, remember: there is only one real glass of Vaseline, and the rest are only pale imitations. Transparent, most often almost fluorescent yellow, its proportion of uranium generally varies between 0.1 and 2%, even if it can climb up to 25% for objects produced in the middle of the 19th century.^and century! We often find the uraline exhibited in cabinets with a source of black light (or Wood’s light, a form of lighting that satisfactorily imitates UV radiation), allowing collectors to impress their visitors. informed and perhaps to somewhat terrorize uninitiated radiophobes. Before wondering if it is not reckless to fill your house with radioactive objects, let’s take a moment to look at the history of this funny invention.

The origins of uralin

Although the uraline only took off in the 19th^and century, the first traces of uranium glass date back to the year 79 of our era. It is indeed within an ancient mosaic, discovered in the villa of Pausilypon (in the Gulf of Naples) in 1911, that the researcher RT Gunther noticed several squares of pale green glass whose analysis revealed that they contained approximately 1% uranium oxide . A surprise when you know how difficult uranium is to extract from pitchblende (the main ore for this radioactive element), leading some researchers to think that it could rather come from autunite, on which it is much easier to sample.

From 1565, pitchblende is extracted from the Ore Mountains in central Europe, where it is used as a dye in industry canopy. But it is to two people in particular that we owe the birth and then the advent of the uraline. First Marin Heinrich Klaproth, who discovered uranium in 1789 and then described the use of uranium oxide as a colorant for glass and porcelain 18 years later. It will take another twenty years before Franz Xaver Anton Riedel (member of a long line of glassmakers in practice for more than 260 years) is unable to produce two types of glasses fluorescents in 1830: a green which he baptized Eleonorengrün and a yellow which he gave the name of Annagelb, in tribute to his daughters Anna-Maria and Eleonora.

radioactive foci

Very quickly, the uraline is talked about in Bohemia, then crosses the borders to France, where it is massively imported. With the help of the Société d’encouragement pour l’industrie nationale, it would only take eight years before a French manufacturer – in this case the crystal factory of Choisy-le-Roi – managed to reproduce the process, which was quickly followed by the Baccarat crystal factory, which will offer its own version of an opaque green, called “chrysoprase”. Clichy, Reims, Saint-Louis, and others will also follow shortly after. Urane glass gradually invades the homes and finally reached its golden age between 1880 and 1920.

The reader and the reader of Cabinet of curiosities could legitimately think that the discovery of radioactivity by Henry Becquerel in 1896, then that of radium by Pierre and Marie Curie two years later would have been enough to dissuade the public from continuing to buy uralin and even to convince them to get rid of it. But by placing oneself in the context of the time, it is clear that the reaction was entirely opposite. Dishes, jewelry, vases, statuettes, absinthe glasses and other fluorescent trinkets tore away like hot cakes, invested with an almost supernatural aura (as often happens when one has an incomplete knowledge of a food or any other natural resource, and that one is endowed with an imagination on which reason has no endorsement).

It was not until the 1940s, with the Second World War and the advent of atomic weapons, that the United States and the United Kingdom imposed severe restrictions on the use of uranium, forcing manufacturers to a sudden halt in production. The latter will only resume at the end of the 1950s, this time withdepleted uranium and much more satisfactory protection measures for workers and storage spaces. Even today, several companies such as Fenton Glass, Mosser, or Summit Glass continue to produce decorative objects in uraline, but its food use seems to have been completely banned. For smaller wallets, be aware that many vaseline glass trinkets are still made today and easily found online. Finally, uranium glass seems to have found a use in the scientific field where it serves as binder between some metals and the glass.

Dangerous or not?

So let’s come to the question that perhaps teases the collectors among you: is it very prudent to keep an object in uraline at home? A detailed study carried out by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission reveals that whatever the situation (proximity to the object, contact with the object or ingestion of one liquid kept in the object for 24 hours), radiation levels are consistently lower than natural radioactivity. According to experts, the people most at risk would be those whose role is to transport these goods from the place of manufacture to the distribution center. The latter would be subjected to a maximum dose of 4 millirems/year, or 1 to 2% of the average American radiation exposure. Nothing to fear therefore, even if an excess of caution has never hurt anyone.

A publication all the same warns against the manufacturer Fiesta. Although this one never produced uraline, some of its brightly colored dishes were coated with a E-mail with uranium oxide until the middle of the XX^and century. However, in this specific case, it would seem that the radioactive particles have an unfortunate tendency to diffuse into the water by a phenomenon called “ leaching “, and this well beyond the thresholds deemed safe for health. Be careful therefore if you collect this type of object not to use them for food purposes. Finally, as we say the medical physicist Phillip Broughton of UC Berkeley: ” If people want to collect uranium glass and Fiesta tableware, that’s fine; it’s rather products containing radium that we would prefer not to see them collect. But that, we may talk about in a future meeting of the Cabinet of curiosities.