Glamour and Glow
In 1917, the United States joined World War I - the Radium Luminous Material Corporation, which later became the United States Radium Corporation, employed female teenagers at a facility in Orange, New Jersey - those employees applied a substance named Undark to military watch faces. The work offered high status and high wages. The substance contained radium, which Marie & Pierre Curie identified as a radioactive element. By mixing radium with zinc sulfide, the radioactive element emitted alpha particles - those particles reacted with the phosphor to create a green light that functioned without batteries. To soldiers in unlit trenches, the illuminated dials provided essential visibility. To the workers the radium represented a luxury.
Because the watch faces were small, the task required very thin lines. The managers told the painters to perform a method named lip pointing. The painters licked the camel hair brushes to sharpen the bristles between applications of paint. Since management promised the paint was safe, the women used the substance often. They applied it to their fingernails, jewelry and teeth - those items emitted a light as the employees walked to their residences or visited dance venues. As a result residents in the area called the workers the Ghost Girls.
The male chemists and executives wore heavy aprons made of lead, used protective screens and handled pure radium with tongs that had long handles. In private settings, the management and scientists possessed more accurate knowledge of the risks. The women who worked at the painting tables possessed no protective equipment. Because the body processes radium as if the element is calcium, it deposits the radioactive material into the bone tissue. Within a few years, the physical damage became visible.
Radium Jaw
In 1922 a dial painter named Mollie Maggia experienced pain in a tooth. When her dentist removed the tooth, the socket did not heal. To the contrary, the tissue near the socket began to decay. Her lower jaw bone became so fragile and decayed that the dentist removed sections of the bone by hand. The condition is now known as Radium Jaw. Mollie died shortly after she experienced a large loss of blood when the decay reached her throat. As women developed spines that broke easily, bones that fractured without impact and tumors, the company began a campaign of denial. By suppressing medical reports and using physicians who claimed the illnesses were caused by syphilis, the company attempted to avoid legal responsibility.
In 1927 five New Jersey dial painters named Grace Fryer, Edna Hussman, Katherine Schaub, Quinta McDonald & Albina Larice filed a lawsuit against their employer despite threats from the corporation. The press called those women the Radium Girls and they experienced extreme physical weakness by the start of legal actions in early 1928. Some of the women were unable to lift their arms for the legal oath and others were unable to move their legs for walking. Evidence from the physical body became clear when a team of physicians and chemists exhumed and examined the remains of Mollie Maggia - those experts from the New York medical examiner's office conducted tests that showed the bones of the women contained high levels of radioactive radium. It is this substance that destroyed their bone marrow and the structure of their cells from the inside.
A Costly Silence
The company avoided a public trial - agreeing to a settlement in June 1928 because of the negative reports in the newspapers. Each woman received ten thousand dollars, payment for medical costs and an annual payment of six hundred dollars. Although several of the original plaintiffs died soon after the agreement, their actions caused a large national response that created important legal rules in the history of American labor. The case established that employees have the legal right to sue employers for illnesses that employees develop while working. Because of this case, the laws regarding compensation for employees have remained different ever since.
The legal proceedings helped establish standard safety protocols for handling radioactive materials - this case was a key precedent that influenced later laws regarding workplace safety. It contributed to the environment that led to the creation of modern workplace safety regulations under OSHA. Decades after the burials, scientists exhumed the bodies of multiple dial painters to study how internal radiation affects the human body over long periods. The bones were so radioactive that they reacted with photographic and x-ray film in some cases. There is a physical record of the damage caused to the dial painters while they earned money for the corporation.