So you were offered a very simple job yet with super good pay, will you be willing to do it? Of course, you would. But, what if there are cons of that job, would you still do it?
Several factories were established around the United States at the start of World War I to produce timepieces and military dials painted with radium, a radioactive substance that glows in the dark. Because their little hands were perfectly adapted for the meticulous, detailed labor, hundreds of young women were hired for the well-paying painting tasks.
The girls had a rather special name called ‘Ghost Girls’, simply because the radium dust they were exposed to on a regular basis truly made their clothes, hair, and skin sparkle. Many of the women dressed up for work so that the cloth would shine brightly when they went dancing after work. Some others even painted their teeth with the paint since it gave them a beautiful smile.
Furthermore, the painters were required to consume the radioactive chemical as part of their work. They were told to use their lips to bring their paintbrushes to a fine point because some of the watch dials they worked on were quite small. When they inquired about the safety of radium, their management informed them that they had nothing to be concerned about.
Picture: Glasgow Women’s Library
So, what could be the issue? The major flaw in this procedure is that radium is hazardous, and despite the fact that their bosses were aware of this, no one tried to inform the women. Radium is exceedingly harmful, especially when exposed repeatedly.
Picture: ZME Science
In 1917, radium-infused paint was a brand-new invention. Despite the fact that Pierre and Marie Curie discovered the element in 1898, it wasn’t until 1910 that Marie was able to isolate a sample to work with.
The pair realized right once that their discovery was risky. Marie received multiple painful burns as a result of her careless handling of radium. The Curies used a lot of pure radium in their experiments. However, popular thought at the time held that a small amount of the substance was beneficial to human health.
Hundreds of millions of people drank radium-infused tonic water, brushed their teeth with radium toothpaste, and wore radium cosmetics to give their skin a brilliant, happy glow in the early twentieth century.
The First Death
It wasn’t long before the “Radium Girls” or ‘Ghost Girls’ began to feel the effects of their exposure on their bodies. Amelia Maggia (Mollie), who painted timepieces for the Radium Luminous Materials Corp. in Orange, New Jersey, was one of the earliest. Mollie’s initial symptom was a toothache, which necessitated teeth extraction. Soon after, the tooth next to it had to be pulled as well. Where the teeth had been, painful sores with bleeding and pus emerged.
Mollie’s dentist decided she required surgery in May to remove a rapidly spreading abscess he’d discovered on her jaw. The bone didn’t appear right when he opened the gums because it was too ashy and grey, so he gently poked it with his finger. The entire bone disintegrated under his fingertip like ashes in a fireplace, much to his surprise and terror.
Instead of removing a tumor, he ended up using only his fingers to dig Mollie’s entire left jaw out. Radium had pierced the bone cells and drained them of calcium, unbeknownst to him. It had torn the collagen inside the bone like a small machine gun, leaving it as nothing more than a mound of splinters.
The rest of Mollie’s jaw, as well as portions of her inner ear, fell out that summer. Mollie died in September 1922, eight months after her first toothache. Her jugular vein had been cut by the tumors, and blood had flooded her throat, strangling her to death in bed.
The Radium Girls Fight Back
Picture: Buzz Feed
Other Radium Girls began to fall ill in increasing numbers, suffering from many of the same excruciating symptoms as Mollie. Their company vehemently rejected any link between the girls’ deaths and their job for two years. Faced with a drop in sales as a result of the mounting scandal, the company finally commissioned an independent investigation, which found that the painters died as a result of radium poisoning. The corporation, refusing to accept the report’s results, commissioned more studies that came to the opposite conclusion, and it condemned the sick girls. Radium was still thought to be safe by the general populace.
In 1925 a pathologist named Harrison Martland. Mollie’s case was revived by Martland. A coroner’s jury, which was made up of laymen and acted like a jury in a court case, determined the cause of death at the time. As a Medical Officer of Essex County, Martland eliminated the jury system and employed qualified medical examiners, as this is as dysfunctional in pathology as it is in criminal justice.
Picture: All That Is Interesting
Mollie’s body exhibited no signs of syphilis, as expected, but it was plainly disfigured by radiation. Similar outcomes were obtained for the other girls who died, and the medical and legal bills eventually bankrupted the USRC.
Some of the girls were reimbursed, while others were not, after a typically protracted and bitter legal battle, and life carried on. For most of the radium girls, vindication came too late. Many perished young, generally in excruciating agony and terror, while others lived for years with weaker bones, missing teeth, and cancers that may or may not have been caused by their radium exposure as teenagers.
The Radium Girls’ impact cannot be overstated. Their case was one of the first in which a firm was found liable for its employee’s health and safety, and it prompted a slew of reforms as well as the establishment of the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Sources: Fascinating Horror, All That Is Interesting, Britannica, BuzzFeed
