Here is a brief description of radium. Pure metallic radium is brilliant white when freshly prepared, but blackens on exposure to air, probably due to formation of the nitride. Radium imparts a carmine red colour to a flame. Radium emits a , b , and g rays and when mixed with beryllium produces neutrons. Inhalation, injection, or body exposure to radium can cause cancer and other body disorders.
Radium is over a million times more radioactive than the same mass of uranium.
Here is a brief summary of the isolation of radium. All isotopes of radium are radioactive and there is only ever any need to make radium metal on very small scales for research purposes. Radium is extremely scarce but found in uranium ores such as pitchblende at slightly more than 1g in 10 tonnes of ore. It may be made on very small scale by the electrolysis of molten radium chloride, RaCl 2 . This was first done using a mercury cathode, which gave radium amalgam.