Radium chloride radium chloride is weakly paramagnetic with a magnetic susceptibility of 1.05. It also differs from barium chloride by the flame color, which is red as opposed to green for barium chloride. Radium chloride is still used for the initial stages of the separation of radium from barium during the extraction of radium from pitchblende. The large quantities of material involved (tonnes of ore for milligrams of radium) favour this less costly (but less efficient) method over those based on radium bromide or radium chromate (used for the later stages of the separation). It was also used in medicine to produce
Radium bromide those two chemicals are chosen for the fractional crystallization. Once the radium is separated, radium bromide can be formed by dehydrating the dihydrate with a dry air stream at 200°C. Another method is to heat radium chloride to red heat with a dry hydrogen bromine gas stream. Radium and radium salts were commonly used for treating cancer. However, many treatments that were used in the early 1900s are not used anymore because of the harmful effects radium bromide exposure caused. Some examples are anaemia, cancer, and genetic mutations. Health effects from harmful amounts of radium exposure are tricky to diagnose