Who were the girls whose coffins glowed, 100 years after their death? They were the Radium Girls, who worked in factories during the war. They were daughters, mothers, wives, sisters … all of them were innocent souls caught in a businessman’s ploy to be the most successful radium factory in the whole of America (Cohen and Kim, 2017).

This is an image of a girl who is scared and her face is covered by the shadow of a hand.

Their health was compromised; their safety was ignored. But the money earned from selling radium painted watches? That was all that mattered. The plight of the Radium Girls was so brutal and money-focused that it was described as a “system of murder for profit” in a 1926 newspaper titled ‘The Price of a Worker’s Life’ (Wink, 2021) .

And so we begin with the tragic story of the Radium Girls. A story of a hazardous chemical that damaged a population of female factory workers. A story of hypocrisy, as factory owners ignored the health of their workers and bribed medical staff to keep quiet about the harmful impact of radium. But most importantly, a story of courage as five women from Illinois embarked on a legal battle to sue the Radium Dial Company on grounds of dismissing occupational health hazards (Johnson, 2012).

Put simply, this tale changed the way health and safety is implemented now in chemical factories.

This is an image of a chemical plant polluting the atmosphere as there is a huge cloud of smoke coming out from one tower.

How did the female factory workers encounter radium?

From 1917 to 1936, young women administered radioactive material onto face dials at factories. They would use their lips as a fine pointer for the brush, unaware that the paint was toxic (National Museum of American History, 2020).

The female factory workers were told that the radium was harmless. The factory had misled the women to believe that the radium paint was safe, yet chemists who worked at the factory wore safety protection and kept a safe distance away from the material, indicating that there was significant hypocrisy in the work environment. As a result, the women suffered deadly diseases caused by ingesting radium. Some women would even paint their nails in radium, because of how luminescent the paint was (Gunderman and Gonda, 2015). The women were told to use their lips to make the brush point instead of using water or a rag cloth because that costed money and took more time. The factory owners were more concerned about business output (Bains et al, 2013).

What health problems did the radium cause?

It was nurses, doctors and dentists who noticed the fact that radium was causing injuries and illnesses in the staff members. For example, dentists would notice loose teeth, dental pains, and necrosis of the jaw, which is now known as radium jaw, which is when the cells die prematurely. The jawbone becomes exposed and is no longer covered by the gums.

Did business and factory owners care?

No. The businesses and factory owners would urge the medical department to keep quiet about the negative impact of radium (Clarke, 1997). The medical department would comply with the business’ wishes, and instead of telling the women the truth about how the radium was damaging their bodies, they ruined the women’s reputations by blaming their symptoms on syphilis (Mullner, 1999), a sexually transmitted infection.

The implications of this were heartbreaking. It tainted women as sexual deviants, even though they had not engaged in that sort of behaviour. All they had done was paint luminescent watches.

Their medical symptoms could have easily been avoided if the factory owners had put people before profits.

How did the Radium Girls win the legal battle?

The legal battle of the Radium Girls was aided by the shocking death of Dr Sabin Arnold von Sochocky, who passed in November 1928. This was the man who had invented radium paint, killed by his own creation. The radium in his hands had caused his fatal end. It was the nature of his death that reinforced the argument of the Radium Girls: radium was causing occupational illness (Sharpe, 1978).

There needed to be a solution, and fast, before more people encountered radium poisoning.

The Radium Girls’ legal battle received a vast amount of public attention and employees in Illinois started requesting compensation for their medical and dental expenses as early as 1927, but management refused completely. Before a lawsuit was filed before the Illinois Industrial Commission (IIC), the sick and dying former employees continued to seek money until the middle of the 1930s. The IIC decided in favour of the women in the spring of 1938. Radium Dial’s attorney filed an appeal to get the decision overturned, but again, commission judge George B. Marvel ruled in favour of the women. Radium Dial appealed several times, taking the matter to the Supreme Court. On October 23, 1939, the court opted not to hear the appeal and upheld the earlier decision. By the time Radium Dial had been forced to pay, the lawsuit had already been won eight times.

Why is this story important?

 This case marks the development of health and safety standards in the workplace. Not only that, but also, radium workers were given proper safety instructions on how to paint the dials without ingesting in toxic amounts of radium. Crucially, the practice of using the lip to point the brush was discarded. Protective wear was also provided to the workers to improve safety.  

How does it link with the chemical engineering industry today?

In today’s world, the need for occupational and process safety remains crucial and cannot be ignored. It is vital that factory owners create a culture where the safety of their workers is an utmost priority. Not an us vs them culture, but an atmosphere where everyone’s needs are considered, irrespective of their status in the workplace hierarchy. A workplace culture that is centred around community and looking after each other is a workplace that can ensure fatal hazards are prevented.

As we saw in the case of the Radium Girls, there was an us vs them culture, where the factory owners, chemists and medical staff knew about the hazardous side effects of radium, but the radium dial painters were not informed about this.

References

Bains, P., Kaur, S., Saini, S. K., & Singh, A. (2013). Health Promoting Workplaces. ” &, 61.

Clark, C. (1997). Radium girls, women and industrial health reform: 1910-1935. Univ of North Carolina Press.

Cohen, D. E., & Kim, R. H. (2017). The legacy of the radium girls. JAMA dermatology, 153(8), 801-801.

Gunderman, R. B., & Gonda, A. S. (2015). Radium girls. Radiology, 274(2), 314-318.

Johnson, R. R. (2012). Romancing the atom: nuclear infatuation from the radium girls to Fukushima. ABC-CLIO.

Moore, K. (2017). The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women. Sourcebooks, Inc. 

Mullner, R. (1999). Deadly Glow: The Radium Dial Worker Tragedy. American Public Health Association. ISBN 978-0875532455. 

National Museum of American History. (2020). Radium Girls. [online] Available at: https://americanhistory.si.edu/girlhood/work/radium-girls#:~:text=Radium%20Girls%2C%201917%2D1935&text=In%20factories%2C%20young%20women%20painted.  

Sharpe, W. D. (1978). The New Jersey radium dial painters: a classic in occupational carcinogenesis. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 52(4), 560-570.

Wink, S. (2021). “The Capitalist System is a System of Murder for Profit” Radium Girls in the Public Eye. Historical Perspectives: Santa Clara University Undergraduate Journal of History, Series II, 26(1), 7.