History is replete with stories of us using something in hazardous ways until the cold hand of science thunked our noggins and said “hey… maybe don’t?” Lead was used in fuel until we decided pumping neurotoxin into the air was perhaps bad. CFCs nearly killed the ozone because we just needed 80s bangs. And have you heard of the miracle that was asbestos?
And then there were the girls who slowly poisoned themselves to death on a diet of radium paint for mere pennies.
Today’s Moment of Science… The Radium Girls.
In the early twentieth century, radiation was generally understood about as well as 5G is understood by conspiracy theorists today. The average person knew it could cure cancer, hence it was a miracle that could do anything. There was also a vague understanding that radioactive stuff released energy, and how could something that releases energy be bad for you?
Really though, how were we supposed to know that a mysterious green glowy thing signaled danger decades before the modern horror movie?
If you’ve noticed only one trend so far in science history, it should be that we’re apes with pencils, fucking around and finding out, occasionally giving out prizes for it. And ‘fuck around’ was a big part of the process for radium. We just put the stuff in goddamn everything. Toothpaste, cosmetics (for a healthy glow, of course), nightlights, and even chocolate could be found with a dash of radium in it. Water laced with radium was a health elixir. And perhaps most infamously, starting in 1917, radium was painted on watch dials so you could see them in the dark.
US Radium Corporation in New Jersey and Radium Dial Company in Illinois were selling watches and, more importantly to them, making a lot of money. Who better for the delicate work of painting these tiny, delicate dials than women, many of them still teenagers, with tiny, delicate hands? The job came with the added benefit of being able to paint their teeth with radium, the original Crest white strip. The girls were said to glow in the dark after their shifts. They were encouraged to put the radium coated paint brushes in their mouths because, after all, what better way to define that paintbrush to a pointed tip than sucking down a little radium? They were making the modern equivalent of about 30 cents a dial, it was the least they could do.
They were told it was perfectly safe. Which is exactly what someone whose livelihood depends on that would tell them.
The scientists who knew better handled radium with proper PPE and lead shielding. They knew people died from radiation poisoning. They knew Marie Curie suffered radiation burns from handling the element.
We typically think of two categories of illness from radiation: a large dose causing acute radiation syndrome, or a smaller dose that builds up enough DNA damage to cause leukemia or thyroid cancer. Well, what they had definitely wasn’t the former but it at least presented differently than the latter. The body treats radium similarly to calcium, and along with prolonged radiation exposure, over the years radium became deposited in their bones.
By the time it became clear that there was a problem, it was far too late. Their illnesses became apparent in 1922 about five years after their work started. They were literally falling apart. They became severely anemic. They developed bone cancers. Their spines disintegrated. A dentist documented gently examining one of their jaws and it just… came off.
The workers sued US Radium Company. Even with all the documentation that the company and scientists knew, and even with the girls visibly confronting gruesome fates, they fought to the bitter fuck end. US Radium claimed some of the girls were dying of syphilis to tarnish their case. When workers at Radium Dial brought word of the lawsuit to their bosses, the company owners told them it wasn’t an issue with their radium paint, it was that US Radium had a bad product, and to go back to licking their radioactive brushes.
It took until 1925 for a medical test to conclusively show the radium in their bones caused this, which the radium industry tried to disprove.
It took another two years to find a lawyer willing to represent their case.
In 1928 they reached a settlement giving the girls a large lump sum payment, medical expenses covered, and a weekly stipend for the rest of their lives.
Their short lives. Most of them wouldn’t live more than two years.
This has been your daily Moment of Science, reminding you some parts of the world still mine asbestos.
And those timepieces still are causing some trouble! I buy them at yard sales and 2nd hand shops both to get them off the street, and to use the radium for physics projects. As the time pieces get old they are especially bad to have around because the paint flakes off. And alpha emitters like that radium won’t hurt you to be near, but are awful to ingest, as those poor ladies found out. 🙁
good work keep it up
This was was also a problem in the 19th Century, when the “fossy girls” (who made matches) became deformed by their oral exposure to phosphorous. Sad. They could not sue, just strike.