Radium Girls: America's "Shining Women"

Radium Girls: the dark story of America's shining women

It's a heartbreaking story about watch-dial painters in Orange, NJ and Ottawa, IL during the 1920s.   These young women were hired to paint numbers on watch faces.  The paint had radium in it, which made the numbers glow in the dark.  At the time, radium derivatives were believed to have restorative properties, even while others warned of the dangers of pure radium.  But the women were not cautioned or even told about the dangerous materials they were working with, and how they were interacting with them.  But within a few years Radium Girls starting showing signs of radium poisoning, including damage to their tissues and bones.   Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner's Handbook, wrote that "There was one woman who the dentist went to pull a tooth and he pulled her entire jaw out when he did it...Their legs broke underneath them. Their spines collapsed."    

Many women and other workers at these plants came down with very rare and unusual cancers at very young ages.   I am grateful for OSHA protections and occupational health efforts today that would prevent things like this from happening again.

• Read more on the Radium Girls from this short comic. 
• Interested in reading the book by Kate Moore? 
• Check out a print copy at the Mercy Library (Oshkosh): WA 470 M822 2018

• Don't have time to read, but still want to hear more about the story?  Check out the audio stories below:
• Women with a Toxic Glow - To the Best of Our Knowledge (from 2017)

Or watch the movie (c2018) [This is only the trailer.]