Science: Death of Radium Painter

Inadvertently, by bringing a formula for making radium paint from Austria to the U. S., Sabin A. von Sochocky, physician and chemist, brought along the death that took him last week.

Radioactive dust and emanations entered his system. They attacked his bones, prevented his marrow from making red blood cells. Aplastic anemia developed. Sojourn in high altitudes and 13 blood transfusions were useless. To void the radium that was in him would require, he once figured, 3,520 years. But eight years was all that he lived after he discovered what was wrong with him.

A co-worker with him for the U. S. Radium Corp., Dr. Edward Lehman, died much more quickly from the radium poisoning. Only two others, French researchers, have died similar deaths.

The five women employes of the U. S. Radium Corp. who sued the company (TIME, June 4) and obtained annuities because of their luminous paint poisonings had absorbed mesothorium salts. The mesothorium made their bones decay. Dr. von Sochocky insisted that they would eventually recover, because the mineral would disintegrate within a few years. It is still present in the five.