D3. Government Warning, 1931. Two Dene natives display a government health advisory issued by the Canadian Department of Mines in 1931. It warned employees in Ottawa who had to handle small quantities of radioactive ore concentrates. The advisory was based on a series of deaths among radium-dial painters in the 1920s who were killed by exposure to minute quantities of radium. Radium is a natural byproduct of uranium and is always present in uranium ore. But the Dene ore-carriers had no knowledge of this warning until 57 years after it was published. Port Radium, Vance Peninsula, Great Bear Lake, NWT. 18 July 1998.
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