SOMERTON MAN MYSTERY: THE DIAL PAINTERS, A BREAKTHROUGH...

 

Recently I was contacted by a long-time follower of this blog. He is a scientist (On this blog, he uses the name JAnon.) with a particular interest in ecology and the history of the mining of Uranium and the handling of radioactive waste from the associated activities. I also acknowledge the invaluable input of researcher Peter Davidson in the research and thus the creation of this post.

It's a huge subject and the links to South Australia are well known. The mining of radium in South Australia went hand in glove with Uranium mining. Radium is in fact a radionuclide formed by the decay of Uranium and Thorium. Mount Painter and Radium Hill were major sources of Uranium and Radium and it was on the subject of Radium that my interest peaked.

First, we need to review what is known of the Somerton Man's teeth, and here we will discuss issues, that to my knowledge have not been previously covered.

THE SOMERTON MAN TEETH

As you would know, a chart of the Somerton Man's teeth was taken by Dr. Dwyer:

This chart clearly shows that a total of 18 teeth were missing. Curiously, Dr.Dwyer offered no explanation as to how the man came to lose so many teeth. Mention was made of the fact that there was no indication of the man wearing a dental plate but that, it seems, was that.

What could possibly cause this loss? Gum disease is one possibility but no mention was made of that either. From what I have read, gum disease might account for some tooth loss, but 18?

In recent years we have seen many posts and comments about the man's teeth and a condition known as Anodontia, but those claims were untrue. One comment referred to the man's smile, here's an example, based on the dental chart, of how SMs smile would have looked, please excuse the fact that this image is of a female but the effect is the same:

There are also other effects of the loss of so many teeth, for example, the shape of the face alters:

The face grows shorter, as is seen in the following image set...

The final image clearly shows a slight overbite which I understand was also present in the Somerton Man.

The takeaway from this is that the Somerton Man's face, because of the loss of teeth, is not how he would have looked prior to that loss.

And now to just how those teeth may have been lost:

RADIUM, A MUST-HAVE FASHION AND BEAUTY PRODUCT...

In the earlier part of the 20th Century, Radium was touted by many as a 'wonder' discovery, it was a cure-all for all kinds of diseases and a beauty treatment. The truth, sadly, was far from that.

The header image shows a clock dial, it has been painted with radium such that the numbers and hands will glow in the dark. Wrist watches that glowed were also popular fashion items right up until the 1960s. The substance used to paint the dials on clocks and watches was Radium. The consequences of the use of Radium in this way were far from those touted by the industry. 

Exposure to Radium was a possible cause of the significant loss of teeth because one of its side effects can be the loss of numerous teeth. It attacks the bone structure, weakens it, and teeth simply fall out. The question is, where and how would the man have been exposed? Thanks to JAnon, we closed in on the drinking of groundwater as one possible reason, there was another.

At Fisherman's Bend between 1941 and the early 50s, CSIR, (the 'O' was added later), and uranium ore was processed. Not only that, numerous experiments were undertaken at CSIR in which free Radium was released. This is an extremely dangerous form of Radium and if anyone was exposed to it then there would have been serious consequences, not the least of which would be abnormal loss of teeth. Whilst researching I came across a number of old CSIR documents which provided the truth regarding these experiments and with which JAnon was more than pleased for reasons I will explain in another post.

We should also consider the presence of Lead because his hair samples apparently contained high lead readings as well as strontium 88, (which Paul Lawson believed to be strontium 90). Strontium 90 is a by-product of nuclear fission as in an explosion or from a reactor. Some time ago I had a discussion with Peter Davidson on just where such explosions happened in the right time frame and we reviewed the locations including Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the Trinity Tets, and Bikin Atoll as well as the Manhattan Project. Those were as we all know atom bomb sites. I am not sure that we reviewed the matter of reactor locations. As it turns out there were two, one in the UK and another in the Ural Mountains. Another post will address that matter.

Whereabouts n Australia would we then find:

1. Radium

2. Lead

3. Strontium 88 ( which is just about everywhere in low readings)

4. Uranium

There are two possible locations, Port Prie and Fisherman's Bend both had a CSIR presence.

On the subject of CSIR, here's a photograph of a man, a botanist, employed at CSIR Fisherman's Bend in the 1940s:

Peter Davison has started a family tree for Leonard;

https://www.geni.com/people/Leonard-Webb-AO/6000000187383203829

At this point, I will refer you to a post from 2014 which includes a reference to Port Pirie and Uranium processing:

https://tamamshud.blogspot.com/2014/08/somerton-man-port-pirie-connection.html

In other posts, we discuss the finding of a place name when each 7th letter from the code page is put through an online deciphering tool using, once again, the Hill cipher.  the letters are first AOAIQSR and the decode spells out (SS) Wangarra, a hugely significant place name as you will read here:

https://tamamshud.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-uranium-mine-link-part-2-somerton.html

Radium:

https://nuclear.australianmap.net/mt-painter/

THE DIAL PAINTERS: 

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/unbelievable-true-story-of-the-radium-girls/IJAPT6KAUH55WNE5OMXVHGEXII/