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 element's discovery. The French physicist Antoine Becquerel carried a small ampoule of radium in his waistcoat pocket for 6 hours and reported that his skin became ulcerated. Pierre and Marie Curie were so intrigued by radiation that they sacrificed their own health to learn more about it. Pierre Curie attached a tube filled with radium to his arm for ten hours, which resulted in the appearance of a skin lesion, suggesting the use of radium to attack cancerous tissue as it had attacked healthy tissue. Handling of radium has been blamed for Marie Curie's death due to aplastic anemia. A