I heard that they, out of innocence, got contaminated with radium because they painted on themselves thinking it was harmless. I've known a long time about the dial-painters and their radium poisoning but I had the facts all mixed up. I became more and more grateful for workplace safety rules we have today because I am sure if it weren't for people like the radium girls who had to die due to negligence at work, we would be in the same boat today-the almighty dollar being more sacred than a life. There were hundreds and hundreds of these girls and the callousness with which the companies dealt with them was criminal. I was mortified by the details of the medical horrors the radium girls lived through and yet I was encouraged by their resolve to do what was right not only for themselves but for others who weren't affected yet.
Review: It has been a long time since I picked up a book that I didn't want to put down. The suffering and deaths of these workers greatly increased knowledge, ultimately saving countless lives of future generations" (341).īecause radium is radioactive for 1600 years, the bones of the radium girls in their graves will still set off a Geiger counter to this day. "The studies of the radium-dial workers form the basis of much of the world's present knowledge of the health risks of radioactivity. Their win ultimately saved the lives of other people working with hazardous chemicals throughout the country. The Radium Girls tells the unbelievable and true story of these women and their determination to fight back, ultimately winning in court after years and years of trying. What these two girls, and all the others involved ,would find out is even more alarming-there is no cure for radium poisoning and no treatment for the symptoms.
Yet when the employees went to their bosses they were assured the paint was safe and there was no connection between their mysterious illnesses and their work. Blum could believe what he was seeing: holes in the jaw bone (Friday56 quote). When Hazel another dial-painter went to her dentist, Dr. The quick four block walk (Book Beginnings quote) soon became a torturous walk for Katherine. Not long after the girls started work at the radium company many noticed strange symptoms not common among people so young: horrible toothaches, achy joints to the point they could barely walk. Their skin, clothes, hair, and shoes would be covered by radium at the end of each workday and the girls actually glowed like otherworldly angels. In addition to ingesting the tiny amounts of radium each time the girls lip the brush, no effort was made to protect the painters from airborne radium. Before they started work many girls asked if the procedure was safe and they were assured it was perfectly safe, in fact they were told it would make them healthier, if anything. They would lip the brush, dip it into the radium paint, and paint over the number hundreds of times a day.
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In their orientation the girls were shown how to make a nice tip of the brush by lipping it. Soon it became so popular to do this that radium companies had to hire hundreds of girls as dial-painters. Watch and clock-makers started using radium paint onto their dials and clock faces. It could also be added to paint which made it glow in the dark. It was added to the American Medical Association's list of acceptable treatments for just about everything: cancer, nervous conditions, anemia, tuberculosis, toothaches, etc. Summary: Radium was the new cure-all at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Her face was swollen with "pus bags" but it was the condition of the jawbone that was most perplexing. As he introduced himself to Hazel and began his examination, he quickly realized that he had never seen a condition quite like this before. Katherine Schaub had a jaunty spring in her step as she walked the brief four blocks to work.Today, she was starting a brand-new job at the watch-dial factory of the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation.īlum was a balding man with a neatly trimmed mustache, spectacles, and a high forehead.
Title: The Radium Girls (Young Readers' Edition): The Scary But True Story of the Poison that Made People GLOW in the Dark by Kate Mooreīook Beginnings quote:
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