When we perform any kind of radiation work, the industry standard is to always maintain ALARA - as low as reasonably achievable. This is primarily because years of research has shown us that even small amounts of radiation can be harmful. So laws were made and precautions were taken. We do the best we can, in a way that causes the least exposure possible.

 

Unfortunately, so was not the case back in the 1920s! Marie Curie and Pierre Curie had become overnight sensations after discovering the new element - Radium. The discovery triggered unbounded enthusiasm and media outlets were full of flashy headlines - ‘Radium - The wonder element!’, ‘Secret of sex found in Radium’, ‘Radium makes blind girl see’, ‘Radium - The liquid sunshine elixir’ and many more. 

Sensational media claims were followed by unregulated commercial products - radium toothpaste, radium spas, radium laced vitamins - convincing people that radium was the cureall that they were waiting for. 

 

During the same time, another industry that boomed was radial dial painting. Young girls (sometimes as young as 11 years old) were recruited in Orange County, New Jersey by the United States Radium Corporation (USRC) and later in Ottawa, Illinois by the Radium Dial Company (and its spin-off, Luminous Processes, Inc.) to paint watch dials. It would otherwise have been a routine job but what attracted the young girls was the new, rare element that everyone in the world seemed to be talking about - radium! The paints were manufactured as a powder that was a mixture of zinc sulfide with a small quantity of radium. This chemical mixture produced the infamous greenish-white glow in the dark. The girls were taught a painting technique that would minimize wastage and maximize productivity - lip, dip, paint. In other words, the girls were all given a camel paint brush that they dipped first in water, then in the powder, and finally used their lip to point the bristles thin so as to paint the tiny dials on the watches. The more dials you paint, the more money you get - was the motto of the companies and so the poor young girls worked six days a week for several months (sometimes years) following the same old routine - lip, dip, paint. 

 

The money was good and the companies made sure enough positive advertising happened. The girls were convinced that they had the best job ever. During the dial painting, it was common for the girls to get the powder on their clothes, shoes, arms, and sometimes even on their undergarments. While walking back home in the dark, their clothes would shine and they thought they looked like little angels. Other girls envied them and wanted their own dial-painting job. They wanted to shine as well!

 

During that shining phase, what they didn’t know was that they were unintentionally ingesting large amounts of radium. Radium that was radioactive. Radium that was harmful to their living tissues. Radium that was slowly beginning to make them sick. 

 

Just like after the discovery of X-rays, when radium was discovered, its medical applications also started gaining light. Radium was successfully used to kill cancer cells and the general public (motivated by the media) assumed that something that can kill cancer is good for you. What they didn’t realize is that radium doesn’t distinguish - it kills cancerous and normal cell alike. So when the girls initially started falling sick, they assumed pimples, fatigue, stress, and even phosphorous poisoning but none considered radium a possible cause. Several doctors were consulted, several tests were performed but there was no end in sight to the suffering of these young girls.

 

For most girls, the onset was a toothache. A troubling tooth or two that required seeing a dentist. The dentist extracted the affected teeth hoping for it to be the end. But it was just the beginning. More tooth extractions followed, holes developed on the jawbones, painful, pus-filled boils - in some cases, the entire jawbone fell out with the slightest touch of a finger. For all the girls that experienced these symptoms, the end was the same - a slow and painful death. 

 

While all these sicknesses and deaths were tearing apart families, the USRC kept operating. The brazen confidence of the company did not allow them to even consider anything wrong with their method. It actually wasn’t until a family member that lost their young girl to radium, declared that they would be filing for compensation. When the USRC saw a long trial threatening their reputation, they decided to finally intervene. Health officials were called in, the Department of Labor was involved, and thorough checkups were organized for all their employees. The young girls that worked on dial painting were subject to a stricter checkup. What the health officials found surprised everyone. The girls didn’t just shine on the outside of their clothes. They had the powder stuck to their bodies and even after multiple washings, the powder didn’t wash off. It became clear that the powder (with the radium) in it was becoming one with the girls’ bodies and slowly poisoning them on the inside. 

 

Sometimes, it took years for the effects to manifest but the lipping, dipping, painting technique led them to ingest so much radium that adverse effects were unavoidable. The radium that was ingested over such a prolonged period, stuck to their bones and slowly started killing them on the inside. 

Marguerite Carlough, was the first dial-painter (from the Orange, New Jersey plant) ever to bring a lawsuit against the radium firms; she was only 23 at the time. Publicity of her lawsuit forced some of the plants to ban lip-pointing and attracted more doctors and specialists to investigate their cases. 

 

Today, we are well aware of radium poisoning. We know that Marie Curie died from cancer due to prolonged exposure to radium. We have the knowledge today and we have advanced enough to know how to protect ourselves. But the Radium Girls suffered the consequences of our lack of knowledge. The society, the radium companies, the media - everyone betrayed those young girls. Their lives were cut too short due to one element that was unreasonably declared wondrous. 

Afterall, all that glitters is not Gold!