Ten Day-To-Day Products From The Past That Were Radioactive

Products full of radioactive ingredients were the norm ‘back in the day’. It was the price you paid for whiter teeth and tasty treats. Before the negative side effects of a little something called radium were fully understood, it was the kind of ingredient that got tossed into just about every type of product you could imagine.Show more

In the 1930s a German factory created a ‘healthy’ opinion to satisfy your sweet tooth. They filled chocolate bars with radio and claimed them to be absolutely rejuvenating. In the 1920s your parents may have made you brush your teeth with a radioactive toothpaste. Doramad toothpaste contained thorium and was believed to protect your teeth and gums.

In the early 1900s smoking would kill you even quicker than today. A German tobacco company was lacking cigarettes with radium to make smoking healthier, of course! What a nonsense!If you were low on energy in the 1920s, you could charge up your body with radium suppositories. Designed to cure fatigue and impotence, they were guaranteed to be perfectly harmless.

Radioactive condoms were thought to be the perfect product, protecting against unwanted pregnancy and disease. Until 1940s when the Federal Trade Commission seized and destroyed the “Nutex skins”.

Women used this cleaner to remove grease, paint, rust, everything but their skin. In 1910 housewives even polished their pots and kettles with this stuff. In 1932 the Tho-Radia makeup line made it into women’s cosmetics kits. Radium skin cream and thorium lipstick - everything to make your skin shine bright like a diamond. In the 1930s adding a pound of radioactive butter would give your pie a nourishing glow. A nuclear power plant right in your oven.

Triple-distilled radium water was believed to cure everything from stomach cancer to mental illnesses. However, it didn’t help an American athlete who drank 1,400 bottles of Radithor and died after his bones started falling apart.

Watching nuclear reaction was just a fun game for the kids of the 1950s. This toy lab never really took off and soon disappeared from shelves with only 5,000 kits sold.