The article every so slightly touches on radium products but doesn't expand on what those are, I suppose that's to draw less attention to them.

I sometimes take my Geiger counter with me when hitting flea-markets and such. In our area we have a very large fall festival way out in the country-side with lots of flea-markets setup. I found my first radium clock there, the guy selling it knew what was special about the clock and thought the geiger counter was neat, the piece I got gave off a mild CPM of about 600. This helped set the stage for me forgetting I live in a bubble of smart and educated and people around me at all times... Later that day I found another dealer with a large platter of antique watches. Woot! Pulled out the geiger counter again and found the tray had a number of very hot watches... and then I saw it. A radium dial watch missing the glass cover and covered in rust and dust, I only got a 20 second reading of around 6000CPM and then I realized my face was about 1 foot from this thing... The danger of radium clock hands is the paint flaking off and inhaling bits of radium dust. CPM is counts-per-minute, so that ~20 second reading I got before I was startled probably translates to ~18000CPM. I stopped and tried to explain to the dealer that he needed to take this watch and bag it and keep it away from the public, especially children that could have access. I was trying to explain what radium paint was and he stopped me and repeated "Radon what?". I tried again, he stopped again and repeated "Radon what?". It was at that moment my bubble collapsed and I realized I had gotten WAY off on the wrong foot. Radium was a word he had never heard, radon was the closest thing (it's not uncommon to have radon gas vents on house basements in our state to prevent buildups of radioactive radon gas). This guy got real quiet as I tried to dig myself out of my hold, but the damage was done. Another person working with him came over and I explained the issue to him, he understood but was making jokes about the government shutting them down or something. At this point I also remembered that there is a strong "prepper" vibe at this particular flea market area, and this poor fellow was probably afraid I'd someone get him "vanned" by the government. Anyway, I tried to buy some of the other watches from him and he outright told me he didn't want to talk to me any more, and that he was not going to sell me anything cause he didn't need for me to sue him for getting cancer or something. Right right, I'd dug a pretty large hole for myself and just needed to walk away, his weekend was ruined and now he had to figure out what to do with this radioactive watch he didn't understand at all.

So, I learned a bunch of things really quick that weekend. One of those things is that our country-side is littered with radioactive artifacts that most people have NO idea about. Most of them are harmless, but the radium stuff is still dangerous for another 1600 years even though the radium paint stopped glowing many decades ago. When people randomly get strange cancers I can't help but wonder if there's a lot more incidental exposure that goes on than people realize. I'm not saying all cancer victims had exposure, but it probably happens more than people suspect.

Another thing I learned was just how much of a bubble I exist in, and all of you reading this as well. You work with fellow smart people, your friends are smart. Probably your family too. My point is that we end up isolated from other classes of people and coming together is a good thing for multiple reasons. Think of those in classes above you too. Anyway, that's enough about that.