Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
Speaker 1: Volgebaum here. The first illnesses appeared around nineteen twenty, and
Speaker 1: initially doctors were baffled. Otherwise healthy young women were suddenly
Speaker 1: sick with a number of ailments, including anemia and cancer.
Speaker 1: But the most concerning symptom these working class women had
Speaker 1: was the crosis of the jaw. Their faces were literally
Speaker 1: rotting away. So what did these young women have in
Speaker 1: common other than their symptoms. They were all factory workers.
Speaker 1: Every one of them worked in radium dial factories in
Speaker 1: New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut. The women who were falling
Speaker 1: ill were employed as painters of radium dials. They painted
Speaker 1: watch dials, clocks, and instruments for ships and aircraft with
Speaker 1: glow in the dark paint. Eventually, they'd learned that it
Speaker 1: was radium poisoning from the paint that was slowly killing them. Later,
Speaker 1: as lawsuits against their employers mounted, the press dubbed the
Speaker 1: women the Radium Girls. For the article this episode is
Speaker 1: based on How Stuff Works. Spoke by email with James
Speaker 1: stem A, curator of the National Museum of Nuclear Science
Speaker 1: and History. He explained when Marie Currey and pr Currey
Speaker 1: discovered radium in eighteen ninety eight. It was only the
Speaker 1: third radioactive element discovered. While radium had no practical applications
Speaker 1: at first, it was soon discovered that the radiation emitted
Speaker 1: by radium could kill living cells, and doctors began using
Speaker 1: it to treat cancers. The stem said. A new treatment
Speaker 1: for cancer obviously created a sensation, and many people concluded
Speaker 1: that if radiation could cure cancer, then it must be
Speaker 1: good for you. In general, both legitimate medical practitioners and
Speaker 1: frauds grabbed the idea and ran with it. A Radium
Speaker 1: became a major fat It was promoted as a cure
Speaker 1: for anything and everything. A company sold devices that infused
Speaker 1: radium's radiation into drinking water, and Stems said a Radium
Speaker 1: also appeared in other consumer products, such as cleaning products, disinfectants,
Speaker 1: and cosmetics. Companies added the word radium to their products
Speaker 1: simply as a marketing tool, even when there was no
Speaker 1: radium used. Another industry also began using radium, but not
Speaker 1: for its curative abilities On its own. The element glows
Speaker 1: dimly in the dark. When mixed with a substance like zinc,
Speaker 1: it takes on a bright green color that can make
Speaker 1: for a glowing paint. Industrial manufacturers realized that this paint,
Speaker 1: known as radium paint, could be used to make instruments
Speaker 1: in clocks visible at night. Demand grew as World War
Speaker 1: One began. In nineteen fourteen, the United States Radium Corporation,
Speaker 1: or USRC was founded. USRC hired young women to delicately
Speaker 1: apply paint to these instruments. Their small hands were suited
Speaker 1: to the detailed work, and the jobs paid well and
Speaker 1: were considered somewhat prestigious, especially considering the lack of employment
Speaker 1: opportunities for women at the time. A Stem said at
Speaker 1: the height of the industry in the early nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: about two thousand women were employed. Estimates of the total
Speaker 1: number of women employed in the industry between nineteen seventeen
Speaker 1: and nineteen thirty five vary, but a number approaching ten
Speaker 1: thousand is not unreasonable. The women would mix their own
Speaker 1: paint from radium dust and other ingredients. They were soon
Speaker 1: known as ghost girls because the dust made their skin, hair,
Speaker 1: and clothes glow when they went out after work. Some
Speaker 1: of the women even used radium paint on their teeth
Speaker 1: to brighten their smiles, but even those who didn't still
Speaker 1: often had direct contact with the paint. The Stem explained.
Speaker 1: Oh once the paint was mixed, the extremely fine detail
Speaker 1: painting required very sharply point paint brushes. To ensure a
Speaker 1: sufficiently sharp point, The women were told to use their
Speaker 1: lips and tongue to shape the brush, and they had
Speaker 1: to do this repeatedly throughout the day to keep that
Speaker 1: fine point. The women's employers assured them that the paint
Speaker 1: was harmless, but soon many of the women fell ill,
Speaker 1: some severely with necrosis of the jaw. Stems said this
Speaker 1: extremely painful and disfiguring condition was the most common of
Speaker 1: the diseases suffered by the radium girls. A radium poisoning
Speaker 1: caused the victim's jaws to disintegrate over time, eventually killing them.
Speaker 1: By the time the first dial painter died in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty three, the medical community had begun to suspect that
Speaker 1: radium exposure was the cause. By the late nineteen twenties,
Speaker 1: many of the women had fallen dangerously ill several had died.
Speaker 1: Although USRC continued to assure the workers that they were safe,
Speaker 1: the company knew that working with radium was dangerous. Stem
Speaker 1: said A report commissioned by USRC in the early nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties concluded that the total lack of safety precautions was
Speaker 1: putting the dial painters in danger. The company submitted a
Speaker 1: falsified version of the report to officials and suppressed its findings,
Speaker 1: continuing to refute the idea that its radium dial paint
Speaker 1: was making anyone sick. Stems said, when one of usrc's
Speaker 1: senior chemists died of a plastic anemia in nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 1: it became obvious that there was a connection. Studies by
Speaker 1: officials in New Jersey proved the women were suffering from
Speaker 1: radiation poisoning and that it had come from the radium
Speaker 1: that they were exposed to in their workplace. By the
Speaker 1: late nineteen twenties, five women sued USRC in Orange, New Jersey,
Speaker 1: starting with Grace Friar. It took Friar two years to
Speaker 1: find an attorney to take the case, but once she did,
Speaker 1: four other women joined. Paper headlines dubbed them the living
Speaker 1: Dead and the Radium Girls. Their attorney, Raymond Barry, hired
Speaker 1: thirty year old physicist Elizabeth Hughes, who used an electroscope
Speaker 1: to measure radioactivity in the breadth of the five dial painters.
Speaker 1: Hughes testified that all five women had ingested so much
Speaker 1: radium that their breath was toxic. Hughes testimony gained worldwide attention.
Speaker 1: To avoid the bad publicity, USRC agreed to an out
Speaker 1: of court settlement. STEM said it was one of the
Speaker 1: first instances in the United States in which employers were
Speaker 1: held libel for the health and safety of their employees.
Speaker 1: It led to the creation of workplace safety regulations and
Speaker 1: of government oversight organizations like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Speaker 1: By nineteen twenty seven, more than fifty women had died
Speaker 1: because of radium paint poisoning. But the Radium Girls story
Speaker 1: doesn't end there. Their story saved consumers lives too. They're
Speaker 1: suffering made the public aware of the dangers of radium a.
Speaker 1: STEM said. By nineteen thirty five, the use of radium
Speaker 1: in most consumer products had ended and government regulation banned
Speaker 1: its use. A Radium was still used in aircraft instruments
Speaker 1: with a lot more safety precautions in place until the
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, but today it's been replaced by technology that's
Speaker 1: a lot less deadly, and some of the radium girls
Speaker 1: lived long lives. Mabel Williams, for instance, worked at USRC
Speaker 1: at age sixteen. She lived to the ripe old age
Speaker 1: of one hundred and four. Another may Keene, died in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen at the age of one hundred and seven.
Speaker 1: They are legends in American and women's history. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article The Radium Girl's Dark Story
Speaker 1: Still Glows with Death End Deceit on houstuffworks dot com,
Speaker 1: written by Cape Morgan. You'd like to hear more about
Speaker 1: the Radium Girls story, check out the first episode of
Speaker 1: my other podcasts, American Shadows. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: in partnership withhoustuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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