Thomas Edison's concern about X-Ray injury was front page news in the New York World newspaper. Under the headline Edison Fears Hidden Perils of the X-rays the history of injuries of his laboratory employee were described. Clarence Dally had an arm and hand amputated because of cancer caused by exposure to X-rays. Edison's own experience was that viewing with his own X-ray fluoroscope harmed his own eyesight two years earlier. The focus of his left eye was disturbed by his experiments causing him to abandon research on X-rays. Edison, the Wizard of Menlo Park, was also quoted saying, I am afraid of radium and polonium too, and I don't want to monkey with them.

Thomas Edison's opinion of radium was quoted within an article in the New York World newspaper. “I have had several pieces of it from Mme. Curie in Paris, and I have experimented with it. I do not see its commercial utility, but it opens up a great field of thought and scientific research. It overturns all the old theories of force and energy... I have a peculiar theory about radium, and I believe it is the correct one. I believe that there is some mysterious ray pervading the universe that is fluorescing to it. In other words, that all its energy is not self-constructed but that there is a mysterious something in the atmosphere that scientists have not found that is drawing out those infinitesimal atoms and distributing them forcefully and indestructibly.