These young women ingested the radioactive substance, having no idea for years that radium was eating their bones inside out. The method of painting? Lick the paint brush to create a fine point in the bristles, dip in the radium paint, and paint a letter. Radium companies recruited young women in their teens and twenties to paint the glowing numbers on watch-faces, many of which were used by soldiers in the World Wars. Clock face with glowing dials superimposed over war footageĭial-painting, then, was big business. Radium also had a luminescent quality, making it popular for glow-in-the-dark consumer goods like watches and clocks. Thought to be a magical cure-all, you could find it in tonics and pills sold widely to people looking for renewed vitality. Radium-based paint was banned in the 1960s.Radium Girls (Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler, 2018) takes its inspiration from the infuriating history of watch-dial painters of the 1910s-1930s who were poisoned and then abandoned by the radium industry.ĭiscovered in 1898 by the Curies, radium was all the rage in the early decades of the 20th century. Following an eventual lawsuit by former dial painters, the industry made further changes to improve worker safety. Upon receipt of the original research report, New Jersey’s labor commissioner ruled that all of Drinker’s safety recommendations be implemented, a move that led to the closure of the factory. Confronted with the evidence that Roeder had acted in bad faith, the Drinkers ignored the continued threat of a lawsuit and published the report. “ has a copy of your report and it shows that ‘every girl is in perfect condition.’ Do you suppose Roeder could do such a thing as to issue a forged report in your name?” she wrote in a 1925 letter to Katherine Drinker. Radium had submitted Cecil Drinker’s report to the New Jersey Department of Labor-with the findings altered to present the company in a more positive light. Through a contact in the National Consumers League, she learned that U.S. While Drinker reluctantly agreed not to publish the report, his HSPH colleague Alice Hamilton refused to back down. When he learned of Drinker’s plans to publish the HSPH team’s report, Roeder threatened to sue. He insisted that a contagious infection contracted outside the factory must be to blame and referred to an internal report that refuted Cecil Drinker’s findings-a report he refused to show Drinker.
He issued a report to the company emphatically recommending safety precautions. Cecil Drinker observed that every inch of the painters glowed, “even the corsets.”ĭrinker was convinced that exposure to continuous doses of radium was causing the women’s health problems, which included excruciatingly painful necrosis of the jaw. Supervisors assured the all-female workforce-some as young as 15-that the paint was safe, and perhaps even beautifying. At a time when many believed radium had healing properties and it was served up in tonics and spa treatments, the women thought nothing of painting their hair, nails, and teeth as a party trick. Dial painters were encouraged to lick their paintbrushes to keep the points sharp, each time ingesting small amounts of the radium-based paint. The factory was saturated with radium-contaminated dust-and no steps had been taken to protect the workers from radioactive material. Drinker, along with fellow Harvard School of Public Health faculty members Katherine Drinker, his wife, and William Castle, agreed to visit the Orange, New Jersey, factory to observe the watch dial painters at work and to speak with their doctors. Eager to halt a mounting scandal, company President Arthur Roeder contacted industrial hygiene expert Cecil Drinker to investigate. Radium Corporation’s luminous watch dial factory were mysteriously falling ill and dying.
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