The 'Radium Girls' and the Deadly Glow

Early in the twentieth century, radioactivity was presented as a wonderful property, able to rejuvenate its users, inject energy, and cure diseases. However, that supposed popularity did not end there. The United States Radium Corporation marketed Undark, a luminescent paint based on zinc sulfide and radium, used to create clocks that could be seen in the dark. Those clocks were painted by hand by a group of female workers who never received adequate protection while handling the material...

In 1917, the United States Radium Corporation had begun operations to extract and purify radium (through carnotite) to create luminescent paint and market it under the brand Undark. Its main client was none other than the United States government. Thanks to the paint's properties, soldiers could see their clocks and operate instruments in total darkness. At the same time, the company sought to extend Undark's applications to the civilian sphere. House numbers, electrical switches, and even glowing doll eyes were some examples.

The company hired women to work in its factories painting the hands and numbers of clocks. The job was attractive for two reasons: US Radium paid much more than other alternative jobs (young women could earn more than their parents), and very few companies hired women.

The employees used brushes made of camel hair, a choice not entirely suitable for precision work. The order was to keep the brushes "sharp" with their lips and tongues. The paint had no taste, and some employees, eager to surprise their partners in the dark, returned home with their nails and teeth covered in paint.

None of those employees received information about the risks of the paint or obtained adequate protection, while the owners and scientists at US Radium did everything possible to reduce their own exposure, using masks, gloves, forceps, tongs, and lead shields.

Starting in 1922, the first major cases of radium poisoning began to emerge. A cashier from New Jersey named Grace Fryer (who had left the US Radium factory two years earlier) started losing her teeth for no apparent reason. Several doctors studied Grace's case and other local women, discovering a common thread: all of them had worked at the US Radium factory.

That connection led Grace to Frederick Flynn, a specialist from Columbia University. Flynn declared her "in perfect health", but the lie did not last long: Flynn was not a doctor, but a toxicologist on US Radium's payroll, and the supposed colleague who had confirmed Flynn's diagnosis was actually one of its vice presidents.

As a defense contractor, US Radium's strategy was to deny, hide, and minimize the facts. Deaths among those women accumulated, but different "professionals" provided alternative explanations, including syphilis, thus staining the victims' reputations.

But that was not all. US Radium hired Cecil Drinker, a professor of physiology at Harvard University, to analyze the conditions in the factory. His report was damning: the place was a catastrophe of radioactive contamination, and blood tests of almost all the women working there showed alarming results.

US Radium's decision was to hide Drinker's report and present a fake one to the authorities. Alice Hamilton, Drinker's colleague, discovered the fake report in 1925, advising Drinker to publish the original. Despite threats from US Radium, Drinker did so anyway.

Grace Fryer took two years to find a lawyer willing to face the firepower of a defense contractor like US Radium. Fryer and four of the affected women filed their lawsuit, seeking $250,000 each in damages.

The medical evidence was overwhelming, but bureaucratic delays were killing the victims, as the judge had decided to postpone the trial. The case of the "Radium Girls" gained national significance. Walter Lippmann, of the New York World newspaper, called the judge's actions "a detestable parody of justice, an insensitive, unmanly, unjust and cruel procedure".

Public outrage managed to expedite proceedings, but the situation was critical, and those involved accepted an out-of-court settlement: $10,000 for each woman, all medical expenses covered by US Radium, and an annual pension of $600. Miserable sums compared to such an act of negligence and misinformation.

It is estimated that US Radium employed 4,000 painters, and many of them died without receiving justice. This horror led to a drastic improvement in working conditions, saving thousands of lives, but the Radium Girls paid the worst price.

Sources

Sources: Timeline (via Internet Archive), Damn Interesting, Environmental History.

More sources: The Radium Girls, Leonard Grossman.