Dangerous Spaces: Radiation Risk, Regulation, and the Built Environment in German-Speaking Central Europe, 1920–33

Enthusiasm for radiation as a modern therapeutic wonder sparked the proliferation of radiation clinics and radioactive consumer goods in German-speaking Central Europe from the 1910s through the 1930s. By the 1920s there were hints that long-term radiation exposure could be dangerous. This paper explores how concerns about exposures from x-rays, radium, and other forms of radiation drove debates about the use, regulation, and protection of spaces used as clinics, laboratories, and factories in the 1920s and early 1930s.