Radium Girls
The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting radium dials – watch dials and hands with self-luminous paint. The incidents occurred at three factories in the United States: one in Orange, New Jersey, beginning around 1917; one in Ottawa, Illinois, beginning in the early 1920s; and one in Waterbury, Connecticut, also in the 1920s.
After being told that the paint was harmless, the women in each facility ingested deadly amounts of radium after being instructed to "point" their brushes on their lips in order to give them a fine tip. The women were instructed to point their brushes in this way because using rags or a water rinse caused them to use more time and material, as the paint was made from powdered radium, zinc sulfide, gum arabic, and water.
The Radium Girls had lasting effects on the labor laws in the United States and Europe following numerous lawsuits following deaths and illness from ingestion of radium.
United States Radium Corporation
From 1917 to 1926, the United States Radium Corporation, originally called the Radium Luminous Material Corporation, was engaged in the extraction and purification of radium from carnotite ore to produce luminous paints, which were marketed under the brand name "Undark". The ore was mined from the Paradox Valley in Colorado and other "Undark mines" in Utah. As a defense contractor, USRC was a major supplier of radioluminescent watches to the military. Their plant in Orange, New Jersey, employed as many as 300 workers, mainly women, to paint radium-lit watch faces and instruments, misleading them by claiming that it was safe.Radiation exposure
USRC hired approximately 70 women to perform various tasks including handling radium, while the owners and the scientists familiar with the effects of radium carefully avoided any exposure to it themselves. Chemists at the plant used lead screens, tongs, and masks. USRC had distributed literature to the medical community describing the "injurious effects" of radium. Despite this knowledge, a number of similar deaths had occurred by 1925, including USRC's chief chemist, Dr. Edwin E. Leman and several female workers. The similar circumstances of their deaths prompted investigations by Dr. Harrison Martland, county physician of Newark.An estimated 4,000 workers were hired by corporations in the U.S. and Canada to paint watch faces with radium. At USRC, each of the painters mixed her own paint in a small crucible, and then used camel hair brushes to apply the glowing paint onto dials. The rate of pay was about a penny and a half per dial, earning the women $3.75 for painting 250 dials per shift.
The brushes would lose shape after a few strokes, so the USRC supervisors encouraged their workers to point the brushes with their lips, or use their tongues to keep them sharp. Because the true nature of the radium had been kept from them, the Radium Girls also painted their nails, teeth, and faces for fun with the deadly paint produced at the factory. By 1927, more than 50 of the female factory workers had died from radium poisoning caused by the paint used. Several are buried in Orange's Rosedale Cemetery.
A 1951 LIFE magazine photo-essay first made the story of U.S. Radium's 1920s dial-painters available to the public. Spotlighted was the then-recent sinus-cancer death of Florence Kohler Casler, who had joined USRC in 1917.
Radiation poisoning
Dentists were among the first to see numerous problems among dial painters, including dental pain, loose teeth, lesions, and ulcers, as well as the failure of tooth extractions to heal. Many of the women developed anemia, bone fractures, and necrosis of the jaw, a condition now known as radium jaw. The women also experienced suppression of menstruation and sterility.Although there were claims that the above conditions were caused by X-rays the women received to investigate their health problems, the amount of radiation absorbed would be inconsequential compared to the amount they were exposed to daily at radium dial factories. As the factory workers' health deteriorated they sought medical attention for problems ranging from dental problems to cancer. Columbia University specialist Frederick Flynn was an industrial toxicologist in contract with the USRC. Flynn and many other doctors referred to the patients lacked medical training and licenses to practice. It turned out at least one of the examinations was a ruse, part of a campaign of disinformation started by the defense contractor. USRC and other watch-dial companies rejected claims that the affected workers were suffering from exposure to radium. For some time, doctors, dentists, and researchers complied with requests from the companies not to release their data. In 1923 the first dial painter died and, before her death, her jaw fell away from her skull. By 1924, 50 women who had worked at the plant were ill, and a dozen had died.
In the early 1920s, the United States Radium Corporation contacted Cecil Kent Drinker and his wife, Katherine Rotan Drinker, from the Harvard School of Public Health to examine the Orange, New Jersey, factory to determine why several employees had fallen ill. They discovered an environment saturated with radium contaminated dust with no protection for workers from the radioactive material.
Drinker was convinced that the employees' continuous exposure to radium was causing health problems. The company president, Arthur Roeder, disagreed and blamed the health problems on an infection outside of the factory. At the urging of the company, medical professionals attributed worker deaths to other causes. Syphilis, a notorious sexually transmitted infection at the time, was often cited in attempts to smear the reputations of the women. The company also claimed that they had hired "a great many people who were physically unfit to procure employment in other lines of industry" as an act of kindness.
Roeder threatened to sue when he found out that Drinker planned to publish his findings and Drinker acquiesced. A Harvard School of Public Health colleague, Alice Hamilton, learned that the United States Radium Corporation had submitted Drinker's report to the New Jersey Department of Labor with the results altered to show the company in a better light. With this evidence that Roeder had acted in bad faith, Drinker ignored the threat of lawsuit and published his unaltered report.
After receiving the full report from Drinker, the New Jersey labor commissioner declared that all the recommended safety measures be put in place which prompted the factory to close. After the workers sued the company, major industry safety improvements were put in place and radium-based paint was banned in the 1960s.
The inventor of radium dial paint, Dr. Sabin Arnold von Sochocky, died in November 1928, becoming the 16th known victim of poisoning by radium dial paint. He had gotten sick from radium in his hands, not the jaw, but the circumstances of his death helped the Radium Girls in court.
Radium Dial Company
The Radium Dial Company was established in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1922. Like the United States Radium Corporation, the purpose of the studio in Ottawa was to paint dials for clocks, their largest client being Westclox Corporation in Peru, Illinois. Dials painted in Ottawa appeared on Westclox's popular Big Ben, Baby Ben, and travel clocks; and the Radium Dial Corporation hired young women to paint the dials, using the same "lip, dip, paint" approach as the women in New Jersey.Following the termination of President Joseph Kelly from the company, Kelly established a competing firm in the town named Luminous Process Company, which also employed women in the same fashion and in the same conditions as the other firms. Employees at Radium Dial began showing signs of radium poisoning in 1926 and 1927 and were unaware of the hearings and trials in New Jersey. Furthermore, Radium Dial leadership authorized physicals and other tests designed to determine the toxicity of radium paint to its employees, but the company did not make the records or results available to employees.
In an attempt to end the use of the camel hair brushes, management introduced glass pens with a fine point; however, the workers found that the pens slowed their productivity, and as they were paid by the piece they reverted to using brushes. When word of the New Jersey women and their suits appeared in local newspapers, the women were told that the radium was safe and that employees in New Jersey were showing signs of viral infections. The co-founder of the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation, George Willis, lectured the women on the supposed safety of radium. Radium was also advertised to women of the time as a cure-all and an ingredient in several cosmetic product brands including "Artes", "Ramey", "Radior" and "Tho-Radia". The cosmetic products containing radium promised regenerative anti-aging properties for a youthful appearance. Dr. von Sochocky told workers that the paint lacked hazardous ingredients. They were also told the radium in the paint was being diluted and could not harm their health. Assured by their employers that the radium was safe, they returned to work as usual.
Significance
Litigation
In Orange, New Jersey, the story of the abuse perpetrated against the workers is distinguished from most such cases by the fact that the ensuing litigation was covered widely by the media. To explain why the women were unable to appear in court, their attorney said: "When you have heard that you are going to die, that there is no hope — and every newspaper you pick up prints what really amounts to your obituary — there is nothing else." Plant worker Grace Fryer decided to sue, but it took two years for her to find a lawyer willing to take on USRC. The litigation moved slowly even after the women found a lawyer, and by the time of their first court appearance in January 1928, two women were bedridden, and none of them could raise their arms to take an oath. The five factory workers involved in the suit were dubbed "the Radium Girls" – Fryer, Edna Hussman, Katherine Schaub, Quinta McDonald, and Albina Larice. The USRC denied any wrongdoing, but the case was settled in the autumn of 1928, before the trial was deliberated by the jury. The settlement for each of the Radium Girls was $10,000 and a $600 per year annuity paid $12 per week for all of their lives, and all medical and legal expenses incurred would also be paid by the company. All five of the women were dead by the 1930s.In Illinois, employees began asking for compensation for their medical and dental bills as early as 1927 but were refused by management. The demand for money by sick and dying former employees continued into the mid-1930s before a suit was brought before the Illinois Industrial Commission. In 1937, five women found attorney Leonard Grossman who would represent them in front of the commission. Grossman took the case without receiving pay as the women were too poor due to inability to work. The case was handled at the home of Catherine Donahue, a woman who was involved but was too sick to travel. In the spring of 1938 the IIC ruled in favor of the women, but by then, Radium Dial had closed and moved to New York, and the IIC refused to cross state boundaries for the women's payout. The IIC did retain a $10,000 deposit left by Radium Dial when it disclosed to the IIC that they could not find any insurance to cover the cost of indemnifying the company against employee suits. The attorney representing the interests of Radium Dial appealed hoping to get the verdict overturned. Radium Dial appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and on October 23, 1939, the court decided not to hear the appeal, and the lower ruling was upheld. Some of the women received no payout, and by the time the matter was officially settled by the Supreme Court, Donahue was dead.