Hair oil spiked with radioactive elements seems like an obviously bad idea to us now. But in the decades right after scientists such as Marie Skłodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie observed and characterized nuclear decay, people put radioactive materials into all sorts of personal care products and beverages. One of the biggest brands was Tho-Radia. As the name suggests, the company put varying amounts of thorium and radium into their products, including a line of cosmetics and curatives for adults and teens. The Musée Curie, a small but amazing museum in Paris built around Skłodowska-Curie’s office and personal chemistry lab, exhibits this rare Tho-Radia men’s hair oil and several other artifacts to educate museum visitors about how public fascination with radiation at that time ran far ahead of the careful scientific work being done to understand it.
Credit: Craig Bettenhausen/C&EN
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2026 American Chemical Society
