THE RADIUM GIRLS

A DYING FIGHT FOR JUSTICE

By Meagan Johnson Amanda Calipo

You may remember “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, the classic novel exposing the appalling working conditions in the meat-packing industry at the beginning of the 1900s. However, a lesser known tale exposes a mass coverup affecting occupational safety in the workplace. It is a tale of hundreds of working-class women flocking to factories to join the elite subset of clock dial painters, a tale where women will die while fighting for their basic human rights to well-being. A tale of litigation and painful death. Unfortunately, this “tale” became reality for hundreds of women in the 1920s, infamously known as “the Radium girls.” After World War I was declared and it became increasingly evident that America would become involved, women rapidly became the face of the industrial complex. Suddenly taking over traditionally male jobs, a select few women began working as painters for watches and military dials using the latest element, Radium. This position was amongst the most selective in the United States, landing a spot on this assembly line would put you in the top 5% of female workers nationally. This job was seductive. It provided women with a sense of economic freedom during a time of burgeoning female empowerment, appealed to the artistic and creative individuals, and allowed the women work with the revolutionary “glow in

the dark” objects. These girls made the most of their “elite” status, often wearing their Sunday’s best to complete a day’s work. They worked alongside their mothers, sisters, and closest girlfriends. It was a tight-knit unit. After a long shift, the girls would stampede to the dancing halls. The best thing yet: they could shine as they danced, a product of the radium.

Despite knowing little about the dangers of radium, each woman was told the radium-laced paint was virtually harmless. For the best result, the women needed to place the brush to their lips to maintain a fine stroke. After they were done or needed a break, they were more than welcome to paint their nails, apply it to their faces, and luminant their teeth. At the same time, the U.S. Radium Corporation had already distributed findings to the medical community stating that radium had its dangers: it was “injurious” and potentially fatal with long-term exposure. As soon as radium poisoning began to set in and gruesome symptoms began to plague the girls, the nation’s outlook on occupational diseases turned its course. Their unfortunate reality can not only teach us about our increasing exposure to false-information campaigns, but also about the faculty and agency of women. The women who would soon spend their last days fighting for justice.

Painting watch dials with radium was a war strategy; it enabled troops to navigate through the dark and radium was very low-cost, in terms financial concerns. However, radium is a highly toxic illuminant with a halflife of 1,600 years. radium had only been discovered 20 years before the first girls entered the dial factories, so knowledge of its toxicity was limited. However, a researcher by the name of Dr. H.S. Martland studied the impacts of radium of the women’s health and noticed a large portion of the women had a serious condition, which he later coined “Radium Jaw.” This Radium Jaw defined the indigestion and later absorption of radium into an individual’s bones. Eventually, necrosis of the mandible (the lower jawbone) and the maxilla (upper jaw) would set in and subsequently constant bleeding of the gums and eventual distortion of the bone due to tumors would begin. The Radium girls began to die prematurely and almost always met the same eventual fate. “One woman tried to have a tooth pulled and the dentist ripped out her entire jaw”, says Deborah Blum, author of the Poisoner’s Handbook. She continues, “others saw their legs break from beneath them and their spines collapse.”

The last Radium girl died in 2014, a woman by the name of Mae Keane. She lived until the ripe age of 107, solely because she was fired from her dial painting job for not meeting performance expectations. She refused to put the brush to her lips to create that fine stroke, claiming she didn’t like the gritty taste. Acknowledging that

this ultimately saved her life, Keane stated in a recent NPR interview “I often wish I had met him [her boss] after to thank him, because I would have been like the rest of them.” The “rest of them” who died at young ages will glow in their graves.

As word began to spread amongst the women that their elite jobs were slowly and horrifically killing them, their employer, the U.S. Radium Company decided to hire their own experts to falsify these salacious rumors. Unfortunately, when their own researchers confirmed the link between the radium and the women’s illnesses, the company became outraged. The president, in a desperate attempt to cover-up these findings, paid for new studies to be published that claimed the opposite. However, the women were fed-up with lies. A group of five women employed from a New Jersey branch, sued their employer under the state’s occupational injury law. In citing gross misconduct in part of a large corporation, the women found it difficult to find a lawyer willing to take on the U.S. Radium Company. Despite these hardships, the women eventually won the case and established legal precedents that govern labor safety standards, including the later formation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) a few decades later.

The Radium girls dying fight for injustice holds an important place in history for both health and labor rights. Although hundreds of women died gruesome deaths, the litigation changed working standards and conditions for the better. The women became a fixture in the health community to express the dangers of radium, which is less commonly used today. The girls made their voices known and showcased the faculty of women. Society today should remember these women as we constantly face mis-information campaigns and live in a world where the impacts of factory emissions still remain unknown on our long-term health. The story of the Radium girls allows us to look inside the world of cover-ups and the deadly effects of false advertising. These girls should be remembered because they may soon represent every one of us.

Moore, K. (2019, April 04). The Forgotten Story

Of The Radium Girls, Whose Deaths Saved

Thousands Of Lives. Retrieved October 23, 2020, from https://www.buzzfeed.com/ authorkatemoore/the-light-that-does-not-lie Johnson, M. (2014, December 31). 2014 was the year the last of the 'Radium Girls' died.

Retrieved October 23, 2020, from https:// www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/ out-of-the-office/2014/12/2014-was-the-yearthe-last-of-the-radium-girls.html?page=all (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2020, from http:// waterburyobserver.org/node/586 Johnson, M. (2014, December 31). 2014 was the year the last of the 'Radium Girls' died.

Retrieved October 23, 2020, from https:// www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/ out-of-the-office/2014/12/2014-was-the-yearthe-last-of-the-radium-girls.html?page=all