Radioactive Pottery Was Once A Hot Idea Shard Found By River Rekindles Memories Of Cure-All

It was colorless, odorless and tasteless. Yet self-proclaimed experts said it would cure cancer, impotence, body aches and all manner of disease.

From about 1910 until the 1940s, health-conscious Americans brushed their teeth, gargled and smeared their bodies with products made with radium ore. They wore belts and pads stuffed with the radioactive material that these days is a feared cause of cancer.

It was “nature’s way to health,” advertisers promised.

It was even available in suppositories.

Last week, while walking along the Spokane River, Dr. Gunnar Holmquist found a relic of the health craze: A shard of pottery emblazoned with lightning bolts and the trade name “Revigator.”

A Geiger counter confirmed that the pottery is radioactive, just as its maker promised.

The shard is part of a water jug patented in 1912. The Revigator Water Jug Co. of San Francisco sold thousands of them over two decades, for as much as $29 for the 2-gallon model.

Instructions told owners to fill their jugs with water every night, so they could drink “healthful true radioactive water” the next day. Six to eight glasses a day was better than an apple at keeping the doctor away.

Glazed smooth on the outside, the pots were rough and porous inside.

Each week, conscientious owners scrubbed the inside surfaces with a stiff brush to release more radium.

Holmquist, a family doctor who has studied radioactivity and the harm it can do to people, said he’s glad he was wearing gloves when he found the pottery near his home, on the north bank of the river just west of the Maple Street Bridge.

Terry Frazee has seen about a dozen Revigator pots in his 20 years as director of the radioactive materials section of the state Department of Health. People occasionally find them in the attic or garage, along with Grandpa’s cane and bamboo fly rod.

Like Holmquist, they’re often alarmed, said Frazee. But the finders aren’t in much danger, he said, as long as they use common sense.

It’s best to leave the pots in a well-ventilated spot where people aren’t in constant contact with them, Frazee said. The garage or attic are fine; outside is better.

But, Frazee noted, three of the pots are displayed in his office and he’s not particularly concerned. He glued the lids to the pots to contain some of the radon gas, which penetrates the outside glazing only in small amounts.

“You definitely don’t want to ingest the water out of the thing,” Frazee said.

Holmquist said his Lower Crossing neighborhood was an early Spokane landfill for bricks, stone and construction debris.

“I’m always poking around, finding lots of nice-looking stones, little pieces of pottery, pieces of plates,” he said.

Holmquist worries there might be other Revigator pots buried in the rubble.

“There’s kids down there all the time,” he said.

Dorothy Stoffel of the state’s radiation protection program doesn’t think Lower Crossing was a major dumping ground for radioactive pottery.

“We believe that (the odds of) finding another shard are extremely remote,” she said.

But, Stoffel added, she and other officials plan to comb the river bank with Geiger counters, just to make sure.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo