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Radium Girls: The Women Who Fought For Their Lives in A Killer Workplace

Hundreds of young women were hired in the early 20th century to paint watch dials with radium, an undiscovered radioactive element. The women ingested radium through their work and began experiencing health issues like tooth loss and bone fractures. It took over a decade for their employer, United States Radium Corporation, to acknowledge the health impacts of radium exposure. The "Radium Girls" fought to have their illnesses recognized and establish workplace safety standards, setting an important legal precedent for employee health and compensation.

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244 views2 pages

Radium Girls: The Women Who Fought For Their Lives in A Killer Workplace

Hundreds of young women were hired in the early 20th century to paint watch dials with radium, an undiscovered radioactive element. The women ingested radium through their work and began experiencing health issues like tooth loss and bone fractures. It took over a decade for their employer, United States Radium Corporation, to acknowledge the health impacts of radium exposure. The "Radium Girls" fought to have their illnesses recognized and establish workplace safety standards, setting an important legal precedent for employee health and compensation.

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levie agacer
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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CHEEKY B.

GANNO
BSRT-1C

Radium Girls: The Women Who Fought for Their Lives in a Killer Workplace

At the onset of World War I, several factories were established across the
United States to produce watches and military dials painted with a material
containing radium, a radioactive element that glows in the dark. Hundreds of
young women were hired for the well-paying painting jobs because their small
hands were well suited for the exacting, detailed work.

Radium had been discovered just 20 years earlier by French physicists Marie
Curie and Pierre Curie, and its properties were not well known. Because it had
been used successfully in the treatment of cancer, many considered radium a
miracle element, and a variety of commercial products were manufactured in
which radium was an ingredient, including toothpaste and cosmetics.

The women hired to paint dials came to be known as “ghost girls” because
the radium dust to which they were exposed daily made their clothes, hair, and
skin literally glow. Many of the women wore their best dresses on the job so the
fabric would shine brilliantly when they went dancing after work. Some even
applied the paint to their teeth because it gave them radiant smiles.

What’s more, the painters ingested the radioactive substance as part of


their job. Because some of the watch dials on which they worked were extremely
small, they were instructed to use their lips to bring their paint brushes to a fine
point. When they asked about radium’s safety, they were assured by their
managers that they had nothing to worry about.

Of course, that wasn’t true. Radium can be extremely dangerous,


especially with repeated exposure. Marie Curie suffered radiation burns while
handling it, and she eventually died from radiation exposure. Other researchers
also perished.

It wasn’t long before the “Radium Girls” began to experience the physical
ravages of their exposure. Among the first was Amelia (“Mollie”) Maggia, who
painted watches for the Radium Luminous Materials Corp. (later the United States
Radium Corp.) in Orange, New Jersey. Maggia’s first symptom was a toothache,
which required the removal of the tooth. Soon the tooth next to it also had to be
extracted. Painful ulcers, bleeding and full of pus, developed where the teeth
had been.

The mysterious malady spread throughout Maggia’s mouth and lower jaw,
which had to be removed, then into other parts of her body. Maggia died on
September 12, 1922, of a massive hemorrhage. Doctors were puzzled as to the
cause of her condition, and, oddly, they determined that she had died of syphilis.

In growing numbers, other Radium Girls became deathly ill, experiencing


many of the same agonizing symptoms as Maggia. For two years their employer
vociferously denied any connection between the girls’ deaths and their work.
Facing a downturn in business because of the growing controversy, the company
finally commissioned an independent study of the matter, which concluded that
the painters had died from the effects of radium exposure. Refusing to accept
the report’s findings, the company commissioned additional studies that came to
the opposite conclusion, and it decried the girls who had taken ill. The public
continued to assume that radium was safe.

In 1925 a pathologist named Harrison Martland developed a test that


proved conclusively that radium had poisoned the watch painters by destroying
their bodies from the inside. The radium industry tried to discredit Martland’s
findings, but the Radium Girls themselves fought back. Many knew that their days
were numbered, but they wanted to do something to help their colleagues still
working with the deadly substance.

In 1927 attorney Raymond Berry agreed to accept their case. Many of the
watch painters had just months to live and were forced to accept an out-of-court
settlement. Still, their experiences made the issue of radium safety a front-page
story across the world. But, even then, the United States Radium Corp. denied its
role, and women continued to get sick and die. It wasn’t until 1938, when a dying
radium worker named Catherine Wolfe Donohue successfully sued the Radium
Dial Co. over her illness, that the issue was finally settled.

The legacy of the Radium Girls can’t be understated. Their case was
among the first in which a company was held responsible for the health and
safety of its employees, and it led to a variety of reforms as well as to the creation
of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Reference:
 Vaughan, D. (2020) "Radium Girls: The Women Who Fought for Their Lives in
a Killer Workplace". Encyclopedia Britannica.
Retrieved from: https://www.britannica.com/story/radium-girls-the-
women-who-fought-for-their-lives-in-a-killer-workplace. Accessed 31
October 2022.

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