The Case Of The ' Killer ' Wedding Rings
By Josh Bloom — October 14 , 2022
The Case of the ' Killer ' Wedding Rings | American Council on Science and Health ( acsh . org )
Cancer from radioactive gold ? Like there isn ' t enough to worry about . But during the 1930s and 40s , it happened . A small number of rings were illegally manufactured from radioactive gold and there were consequences to ring fingers decades later .
OK , that title is a bit overblown , but it ' s also correct . Sort of . Although incredibly rare , decades ago a small number of people had their fingers chopped off because they were wearing wedding rings .
Radiodermatitis from gold wedding rings . Credit : J Am Acad Derm
And it ' s not because men were caught in flagrante delicto by their knife-wielding wives ( 1 ). It was because of radioactive gold that made up their wedding rings ; this caused cancers of varying severity , including cases where the fingers had to be amputated . Talk about a metaphor for marriage , right ? I ' ll leave the symbolism to the philosophers in the crowd and stick to the science .
But even the science is a bit shaky .
Radioactive gold ? Real , but rare
Of all the things in life to worry about , getting cancer from a radioactive gold wedding ring won ' t make the list , even that of neurotic ( redundancy alert ) New Yorkers . But in 1981 , a cluster of 177 pieces of radioactive jewelry was found in upstate New York and it was responsible for really rare cases of cancer . The jewelry was mostly made in the 1930s and 40s .