On the 20th of April, 1902, after years of hard work Marie and Pierre Curie successfully
isolated a brand new element: radium. It was thought at the time that this new material
might have all kinds of beneficial properties, and so radium was swiftly incorporated into a
huge range of products - everything from makeup to ceramics, to health tonics and jewelry.
What wasn't understood at this time was that radium was, in fact, quite deadly.
The popularity of radium shortly after its discovery cannot be overstated.
Radiation was something that wasn't well understood at the time, but which had
positive associations. It was understood that radiation could be used to kill cancerous cells,
but the damaging effects it had on healthy cells weren't fully appreciated. Added to
this was the fact that radium glowed - a visible effect that was quite extraordinary at the time,
and which led many to believe that it must surely have some almost magical health-giving properties.
Picking up on this, quack doctors were quick to promote radium as invigorating and curative.
With this incorrect belief firmly entrenched, radium was soon included in everything.
You could buy chocolate and other snacks laced with radium,
or purchase a radium-coated crock in which to store your drinking water.
Radium was added to makeup, to skincare products, to toothpaste and other toiletries. It was
available to buy in the form of radium plasters, radium ointment, radium syrup, and even radium
suppositories - "medicines" that were touted as treating every ailment imaginable. You could
even visit radium spas, where you'd be exposed to the material in radium-infused baths and saunas.
As the world descended into World War One, another use for radium came to the forefront:
when infused into paint it would make that paint glow in the dark.
Rhis made it an ideal material for coating watch faces, control panels and instrument
dials. Radium provided much needed illumination for soldiers in the field without them having
to rely on lamps or other bulky equipment. From 1917 the demand for radium-coated dials
skyrocketed... which was good news for the United States Radium Corporation.
The company had been in the business of extracting and processing uranium for a few years. Now it
expanded to mixing and applying radium-infused paint - a substance which they called "undark".
With the war effort requiring an extraordinary number of luminous dials,
business boomed. Within a year there were facilities in several states,
including a plant in Orange, New Jersey, which specialized in the painting of dials.
Many local women were pleased to secure a job at this facility.
It was considered good work: it was well paid, the conditions were fairly pleasant compared to other
jobs, and it was skilled and respectable work. On top of all that, of course, it was perceived as
not being overly dangerous... certainly when compared to working in a munitions factory.
All things considered it was no surprise that many local people were employed as dial painters.
The typical work of a dial painter was simple but painstaking - they would be supplied with
radium paint and freshly stamped dials and had to use paint brushes to strategically apply radium
to the parts of the dial which needed to glow. Precision was required,
and so workers were instructed to lick the tips of their brushes in between each application
in order to bring the bristles to a fine point. In addition to this, workers were under the
impression that working with radium was a perk of the job. The stuff was considered (by the general
public, at least) to be health-giving rather than dangerous and, indeed, some people paid
a lot of money to visit radium spas or purchase radium-infused products. The workers at the United
States Radium Corporation had access to the stuff for free... and so they used it, painting their
teeth and nails to give them a pleasant glow before heading out to dances in the evenings.
Years passed. Hundreds of thousands of dials were painted and shipped out. The war ground on,
and eventually came to an end, much to the relief of the general population.
But all was not well for the ex-workers of the United States Radium Corporation. Slowly, one by
one, dial painters were falling ill. As the 1910s became the 1920s, hundreds of women who had worked
as dial painters over the last few years started noticing pain in their teeth and jaws. Many were
having to visit their dentists on a regular basis, and were losing teeth with each and every visit.
They were constantly exhausted and in pain, and in some cases it was found that their jawbones were
riddled with holes, reduced to a brittle hollow honeycomb. Despite this alarming wave of sickness,
few were able to persuade anyone to take their ailments seriously. Indeed, when 22-year-old
Molly Maggia passed away after years of pain in her jaw and teeth her condition was written off as
syphilis. The complaints of many other women were glossed over with the same explanation, despite
symptoms that pointed to something quite different and more sinister. It was 1925 before any of
the workers came to understand the devastating effect that the radium had had on their bodies.
Grace Fryer had once been a dial painter. Now her body was quite literally falling apart.
The bones of her spine crumbled and required a metal brace.
Tumors and abscesses sprouted in her jaw, and she was in constant pain. The radium she had ingested
while working had riddled her with cancer and weakened her bones. It would soon end her life.
Furious, Grace and four of her colleagues moved to sue their ex-employer. For two years,
however, no lawyer would take them seriously, despite their steadily worsening conditions.
It was 1928 before the suit was finally filed. By this time the demand for radium was on the
decline, as people woke up to the dangers of radiation. Sales of radium-infused products
fell still further when newspapers around the world printed details of Grace's story.
The United States Radium Corporation did everything it could to avoid responsibility,
including using a range of delaying tactics to draw out the suit,
in the hope that Grace and her colleagues would die before it could be resolved.
At the same time they quietly issued workers with protective equipment, and advised against
the practice of licking brushes to point them. It was the very definition of too little too late,
especially considering that scientists and upper management at the corporation
had been using protective gear around radium for years by that stage. By the end of 1928,
the case had been settled in favor of the women workers - they were awarded some compensation,
although it was only a fraction of what they had initially demanded. Their medical bills, at least,
were covered and they were able to live out their final days with some measure of dignity. Many more
suits followed from workers not just at the United States Radium Corporation, but at a
number of companies which had handled radium in the years after its discovery. While Grace Fryer
and her colleagues are remembered for leading the fight against the injustice that was done to them,
there were thousands more workers whose fates varied enormously. Some radium girls died young,
unable to persuade anyone to take their ailments seriously. Some lived longer lives and battled
cancer in their old age. Some prevailed in their fight for compensation and some did not.
Though many of the radium girls suffered enormously and died before their time,
their deaths were not in vain - many radium girls volunteered for tests and medical examinations in
later life, allowing us to understand for the first time exactly how radiation really
affects the human body. Something which directly persuaded scientists to take greater precautions
in later experiments with nuclear weapons, and thus potentially saved many thousands of lives.
In addition to this the case pushed forward by the radium girls was the very first in which an
employer was forced to take responsibility for the health and safety of its employees. This
was a revolutionary concept in 1928, but thanks in part to the work and sacrifice of the radium girls
it is now something that most workers, in theory at least, have a right to expect.