The Radium Girls and the Glow That Ate Their Bones
In the 1920s, young women painting watch dials were told to lick their brushes to a fine point, ingesting radium with every stroke. Their fight to prove the substance was killing them reshaped worker safety and our understanding of internal radiation poisoning.
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The human body mistakes radium for calcium and deposits it directly into the bones.
Factory workers ingested radium daily by using their lips to sharpen camel-hair paintbrushes.
Company owners used lead screens and tongs while denying any health risks to their workers.
U.S. Radium Corporation falsely blamed syphilis to avoid liability for worker jaw fractures and deaths.
Internal radium poisoning proved fatal even in quantities as small as eight micrograms.
The Radium Girls' lawsuit established the legal precedent for occupational disease and chronic exposure.
- 01Intro1 min
- 02The Luminous Deception2 min
- 03The Biological Trojan Horse2 min
- 04The Fight for Discovery3 min
- 05A Legacy in the Marrow2 min
- 06Outro1 min
- Radium Girls - Wikipedia
- Radium Girls: The Women Who Fought for Their Lives in a ...
- The Radium Girls: A Tale of Workplace Safety – Juris Magazine
- Radium Girls: Living Dead Women
- The Radium Girls
- Radium girls - Environmental history
- The National Bureau of Standards and the Radium Dial Painters
- The National Bureau of Standards and the Radium Dial Painters
- Studies of Radium in Human Bone | Radiology
- The Distribution of Radium in Human Bone
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