Radium and the hydrogen isotope tritium emit particles that excite the electrons of fluorescent or phosphorescent materials.
Why? The surface of plutonium burns in the presence of oxygen in the air, like an ember of a fire. He earned notoriety in the early 1930s when he died from multiple radiation-induced cancers after consuming Radithor, a popular patent medicine made from radium dissolved in water….
In 1970, his body was exhumed and found to still be radioactive. One of those is Radithor inventor William Bailey, who died in 1949 at age 64 of carcinoma of the bladder.
