![]() ![]() She was only twenty-four-years-old.Some of the women would begin to see the same dentists who believed that they had "phossy jaw", or phosphorous in their jaw which was causing the decay of their mouth. On September 12, 1922, Mollie Maggia would die due to radium poisoning, but no one would know it. But they weren't necessarily all working at the plant anymore or going to the same dentist so the pieces falling together that something was wrong would take a while. The women began to have problems with their teeth and jaws and their arms and legs. But at the same time, those that worked with it in the company were missing pieces of their fingers and had burns. This would mean that they would be ingesting radium.Now at that time, the company was selling radium tonics and radium was a known treatment for cancer so it was seen as a wonder drug. They were told to lip the paintbrush in their mouth to get it wet, then dip it in the paint, then brush it on the dial, then repeat. The plant existed first in Newark than in Orange, New Jersey. I vividly remember this documentary so that when this book was published recently I was anxious to read it and learn more.The Radium Luminous Materials Corporations would begin sometime after 1913 with the advent of the radium paint by Sabin von Sochocky for use on dials for watches and later when the World War I started up to paint instrument dials. In 1987 Cinemax aired a documentary called Radium City based on the Radium Dial plant in Ottawa, Illinois that interviewed family members of victims and even a victim. It is the powerful tale of a group of ordinary women from the Roaring Twenties, who themselves learned how to roar. And so, in the face of unimaginable suffering-in the face of death-these courageous women refused to accept their fate quietly, and instead became determined to fight for justice.ĭrawing on previously unpublished sources-including diaries, letters, and court transcripts, as well as original interviews with the women's relatives- The Radium Girls is an intimate narrative account of an unforgettable true story. Yet their employers denied all responsibility. The very thing that had made them feel alive-their work-was in fact slowly killing them: they had been poisoned by the radium paint. They were the radium girls.Īs the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious and crippling illnesses. ![]() It was a fun job, lucrative and glamorous-the girls themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in the dust from the paint. As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium.
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