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Radium girls is a term for women who, after the First World War, were painting clock faces with radium. The activities taking place in the United States required manual dexterity and small hands, which is why these works were performed by hundreds of young ladies. They paid the highest price for a well-paid job.
- Radium is a radioactive element discovered by Maria Skłodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre Curie
- In the second decade of the twentieth century, the United States produced fluorescent watches coated with paint containing radium
- Several thousand young women worked in the production and paid for their work with their lives
- You can find more such stories on the TvoiLokony home page
Although the work related to decorating the watch faces was well paid, nothing compensated for the losses and dangers to which Rad girls, the American factory workers dealing with luminescent decorating of watches in the XNUMXth century, were exposed.
Before taking up employment, employers assured that the element did not pose a threat to health, which of course turned out to be only a bundle of lies, and the healing properties attributed to the element made it one of the more commonly used additives for, among others cosmetics, paints, sparkling water, jugs or medicines.
Working in close contact with radium particles resulted in the death of thousands of young women who are now referred to as Radium Girls, sometimes also as “radiant girls”.
Why was advice used to decorate watches?
Radium is a radioactive element that was discovered by a couple of famous scientists – Maria Skłodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre Curie. The scientific discovery was made on December 21, 1898. Soon after that, the element was called “medicinal” and it began to be used in the production of many products and articles that we use every day, including watches. In addition to its supposed anti-cancer activity, radium has fascinated by its other properties. The dust of the element caused the clothes and hair of the women who painted watch faces to sparkle. For this reason, radium has found another application – it was used, among others, in for the production of toothpaste.
Luminescent watches have become an absolutely desirable item. The dials and numbers covered with radium glowed in the dark, which made the accessories adorning the wrists seem more prestigious and, above all, modern gadgets.
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Watches decorated by radium girls with fluorescent paints made of radium and zinc sulphide sometimes required painting other than traditional work, using hands. Even the mouth was used to precisely cover the hard-to-reach elements, which is why the harmful chemical element influenced the body in many different ways. What were the consequences of the Rad girls and the people who work with this radioactive substance on a daily basis?
Radium girls and their tragedy
The group of radium girls who worked on decorating watches after World War I is estimated at four thousand women. Work was particularly attractive because of the wages that were well above those in the United States at the time. Using the lips to precisely distribute the dye, and later also licking the brushes in order to quickly clean them, caused the element that was dangerous to health to take its toll.
The first ailments reported by employees of American factories were toothache and jaw pain. Soon, the ailments were accompanied by tooth loss, and then the need to remove individual parts and muscles of the face. An example of one in a thousand other frightening stories is the case of Amelia “Mollie” Maggia, who works for the United States Radium Corporation in New Jersey. After removing a few teeth that were not able to function normally, Mollie began to suffer from purulent and bleeding ulcers forming in the cavities of the extracted teeth. A young woman, after many harsh experiences, pain and suffering, died in 1923. When asked about the cause of death, doctors replied that it was syphilis. It was the first death of an American factory worker caused by irradiation as a direct cause.
It is also worth mentioning that the inventor of the then deadly radium herself, the Nobel Prize winner, Maria Skłodowska-Curie, died of radiation sickness – aplastic anemia. In turn, the daughter of a Polish-French scientist left because of leukemia.
Consequences of the struggle and fights of the council girls
For a long time, the cause of death of women working on decorating watches with radium paints was not associated with the issue of radiation. The United States Radium Corporation itself denied the harmfulness of the element and its negative impact on the health of employees. The breakthrough came in 1925 when the results of a study by pathologist Harrison Martland were released. The man proved that the direct cause of death of many women was permanent contact with the radioactive element.
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Since then, the council girls have started a fight to stop work and endanger the health of other factory workers. Many of them lived with the knowledge that they had weeks or months to live. The judicial representative who acted as the advocate of all the injured women was Raymond Berry.
The court fight ended only in 1938 with the case filed by the already dying Catherine Wolfe Donohue. The final result of the appalling struggle and efforts of the girls ‘councils was to bring employers to bear the consequences for fatal workers’ health risks and the creation of a US health and safety administration. At that time, the topic of employee protection became one of the most important issues.