WEBVTT - How Did the Radium Girls Change Workers' Rights? 0:00:01.800 --> 0:00:07.840 Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren 0:00:07.920 --> 0:00:14.319 Volgebaum here. The first illnesses appeared around nineteen twenty, and 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:19.240 initially doctors were baffled. Otherwise healthy young women were suddenly 0:00:19.280 --> 0:00:22.920 sick with a number of ailments, including anemia and cancer. 0:00:24.079 --> 0:00:27.360 But the most concerning symptom these working class women had 0:00:27.680 --> 0:00:31.760 was the crosis of the jaw. Their faces were literally 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:36.120 rotting away. So what did these young women have in 0:00:36.159 --> 0:00:40.360 common other than their symptoms. They were all factory workers. 0:00:40.760 --> 0:00:43.800 Every one of them worked in radium dial factories in 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:48.600 New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut. The women who were falling 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:52.280 ill were employed as painters of radium dials. They painted 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:55.760 watch dials, clocks, and instruments for ships and aircraft with 0:00:56.040 --> 0:00:59.280 glow in the dark paint. Eventually, they'd learned that it 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:03.640 was radium poisoning from the paint that was slowly killing them. Later, 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:06.880 as lawsuits against their employers mounted, the press dubbed the 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:11.600 women the Radium Girls. For the article this episode is 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:14.360 based on How Stuff Works. Spoke by email with James 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:17.600 stem A, curator of the National Museum of Nuclear Science 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:21.880 and History. He explained when Marie Currey and pr Currey 0:01:21.959 --> 0:01:24.640 discovered radium in eighteen ninety eight. It was only the 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:31.240 third radioactive element discovered. While radium had no practical applications 0:01:31.280 --> 0:01:34.560 at first, it was soon discovered that the radiation emitted 0:01:34.600 --> 0:01:38.360 by radium could kill living cells, and doctors began using 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:42.720 it to treat cancers. The stem said. A new treatment 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:46.920 for cancer obviously created a sensation, and many people concluded 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:50.040 that if radiation could cure cancer, then it must be 0:01:50.080 --> 0:01:53.800 good for you. In general, both legitimate medical practitioners and 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:58.720 frauds grabbed the idea and ran with it. A Radium 0:01:58.760 --> 0:02:01.640 became a major fat It was promoted as a cure 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:05.800 for anything and everything. A company sold devices that infused 0:02:05.880 --> 0:02:10.600 radium's radiation into drinking water, and Stems said a Radium 0:02:10.680 --> 0:02:14.760 also appeared in other consumer products, such as cleaning products, disinfectants, 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:18.240 and cosmetics. Companies added the word radium to their products 0:02:18.360 --> 0:02:20.560 simply as a marketing tool, even when there was no 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:25.120 radium used. Another industry also began using radium, but not 0:02:25.240 --> 0:02:29.040 for its curative abilities On its own. The element glows 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:32.359 dimly in the dark. When mixed with a substance like zinc, 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:35.359 it takes on a bright green color that can make 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:40.880 for a glowing paint. Industrial manufacturers realized that this paint, 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:43.840 known as radium paint, could be used to make instruments 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:47.520 in clocks visible at night. Demand grew as World War 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:51.640 One began. In nineteen fourteen, the United States Radium Corporation, 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:58.400 or USRC was founded. USRC hired young women to delicately 0:02:58.400 --> 0:03:02.240 apply paint to these instruments. Their small hands were suited 0:03:02.280 --> 0:03:05.160 to the detailed work, and the jobs paid well and 0:03:05.200 --> 0:03:09.160 were considered somewhat prestigious, especially considering the lack of employment 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:13.560 opportunities for women at the time. A Stem said at 0:03:13.560 --> 0:03:16.040 the height of the industry in the early nineteen twenties, 0:03:16.200 --> 0:03:19.919 about two thousand women were employed. Estimates of the total 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:22.799 number of women employed in the industry between nineteen seventeen 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:26.480 and nineteen thirty five vary, but a number approaching ten 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:31.839 thousand is not unreasonable. The women would mix their own 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:35.480 paint from radium dust and other ingredients. They were soon 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:39.440 known as ghost girls because the dust made their skin, hair, 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:43.120 and clothes glow when they went out after work. Some 0:03:43.200 --> 0:03:45.480 of the women even used radium paint on their teeth 0:03:45.600 --> 0:03:51.000 to brighten their smiles, but even those who didn't still 0:03:51.040 --> 0:03:54.600 often had direct contact with the paint. The Stem explained. 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:57.800 Oh once the paint was mixed, the extremely fine detail 0:03:57.840 --> 0:04:02.240 painting required very sharply point paint brushes. To ensure a 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:05.240 sufficiently sharp point, The women were told to use their 0:04:05.360 --> 0:04:09.560 lips and tongue to shape the brush, and they had 0:04:09.600 --> 0:04:12.200 to do this repeatedly throughout the day to keep that 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:17.679 fine point. The women's employers assured them that the paint 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:20.960 was harmless, but soon many of the women fell ill, 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:26.520 some severely with necrosis of the jaw. Stems said this 0:04:26.640 --> 0:04:30.279 extremely painful and disfiguring condition was the most common of 0:04:30.320 --> 0:04:33.800 the diseases suffered by the radium girls. A radium poisoning 0:04:33.880 --> 0:04:38.080 caused the victim's jaws to disintegrate over time, eventually killing them. 0:04:40.440 --> 0:04:43.040 By the time the first dial painter died in nineteen 0:04:43.080 --> 0:04:46.200 twenty three, the medical community had begun to suspect that 0:04:46.360 --> 0:04:50.160 radium exposure was the cause. By the late nineteen twenties, 0:04:50.400 --> 0:04:54.039 many of the women had fallen dangerously ill several had died. 0:04:55.760 --> 0:04:59.320 Although USRC continued to assure the workers that they were safe, 0:04:59.640 --> 0:05:03.400 the company knew that working with radium was dangerous. Stem 0:05:03.520 --> 0:05:07.080 said A report commissioned by USRC in the early nineteen 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:10.640 twenties concluded that the total lack of safety precautions was 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:14.640 putting the dial painters in danger. The company submitted a 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:18.880 falsified version of the report to officials and suppressed its findings, 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:21.880 continuing to refute the idea that its radium dial paint 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:27.600 was making anyone sick. Stems said, when one of usrc's 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:31.120 senior chemists died of a plastic anemia in nineteen twenty five, 0:05:31.480 --> 0:05:34.720 it became obvious that there was a connection. Studies by 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:37.800 officials in New Jersey proved the women were suffering from 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:40.480 radiation poisoning and that it had come from the radium 0:05:40.520 --> 0:05:45.320 that they were exposed to in their workplace. By the 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:50.160 late nineteen twenties, five women sued USRC in Orange, New Jersey, 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:54.640 starting with Grace Friar. It took Friar two years to 0:05:54.640 --> 0:05:57.479 find an attorney to take the case, but once she did, 0:05:57.760 --> 0:06:01.799 four other women joined. Paper headlines dubbed them the living 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:07.840 Dead and the Radium Girls. Their attorney, Raymond Barry, hired 0:06:07.880 --> 0:06:11.400 thirty year old physicist Elizabeth Hughes, who used an electroscope 0:06:11.400 --> 0:06:14.880 to measure radioactivity in the breadth of the five dial painters. 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:18.800 Hughes testified that all five women had ingested so much 0:06:18.880 --> 0:06:24.760 radium that their breath was toxic. Hughes testimony gained worldwide attention. 0:06:25.320 --> 0:06:28.520 To avoid the bad publicity, USRC agreed to an out 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:32.159 of court settlement. STEM said it was one of the 0:06:32.160 --> 0:06:35.080 first instances in the United States in which employers were 0:06:35.120 --> 0:06:37.880 held libel for the health and safety of their employees. 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:41.279 It led to the creation of workplace safety regulations and 0:06:41.520 --> 0:06:45.640 of government oversight organizations like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:51.719 By nineteen twenty seven, more than fifty women had died 0:06:51.760 --> 0:06:55.880 because of radium paint poisoning. But the Radium Girls story 0:06:56.080 --> 0:07:00.920 doesn't end there. Their story saved consumers lives too. They're 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:05.360 suffering made the public aware of the dangers of radium a. 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:08.920 STEM said. By nineteen thirty five, the use of radium 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:12.400 in most consumer products had ended and government regulation banned 0:07:12.440 --> 0:07:17.480 its use. A Radium was still used in aircraft instruments 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:20.480 with a lot more safety precautions in place until the 0:07:20.560 --> 0:07:24.200 nineteen seventies, but today it's been replaced by technology that's 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:28.520 a lot less deadly, and some of the radium girls 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:32.640 lived long lives. Mabel Williams, for instance, worked at USRC 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:35.800 at age sixteen. She lived to the ripe old age 0:07:35.840 --> 0:07:39.560 of one hundred and four. Another may Keene, died in 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:41.800 twenty fourteen at the age of one hundred and seven. 0:07:42.720 --> 0:07:51.800 They are legends in American and women's history. Today's episode 0:07:51.800 --> 0:07:54.320 is based on the article The Radium Girl's Dark Story 0:07:54.520 --> 0:07:57.960 Still Glows with Death End Deceit on houstuffworks dot com, 0:07:57.960 --> 0:08:01.160 written by Cape Morgan. You'd like to hear more about 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:03.600 the Radium Girls story, check out the first episode of 0:08:03.640 --> 0:08:08.240 my other podcasts, American Shadows. Brainstuff is production of iHeartRadio 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:11.360 in partnership withhoustuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:14.760 Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, 0:08:14.880 --> 0:08:17.720 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.