My mother used to shop at The May Company quite often when I was a kid in the early 50’s and I always ran over to the shoe department to look at my feet in one of those. Not long after it was discovered that they were dangerous and they were taken out. About the same time a friend of my parents who was an X-Ray technician was starting to get damage to his hands from holding the film in position while he was taking x-rays of patients. That when they started going into that shielded room to take the x-ray.
Yuck!