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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 ...
Hundreds of young women were hired for the well-paying painting jobs because their small hands were well suited for the exacting, detailed work. Radium had been discovered just 20 years earlier by French physicists Marie Curie and Pierre Curie, and its properties were not well known.
Jan 26, 2023 · By 1927, more than 50 women had died because of radium paint poisoning. But the Radium Girls' story doesn't end there. Their story saved lives, too. Their diseases and suffering made the public aware of the dangers of radium. "By 1935, the use of radium in most consumer products had ended and government regulation banned its use," says Stemm.
Apr 6, 2023 · Known as the Radium Girls, female watchmakers painted dials with self-luminous paint filled with radioactive radium, leading to severe health complications. While the men wore lead aprons to protect themselves from the radiation, the women were given nothing.
Dec 15, 2020 · Radium Girls: Directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher, Ginny Mohler. With Joey King, Abby Quinn, Cara Seymour, Scott Shepherd. In the 1920s a group of factory workers advocate for safer work conditions after some of their colleagues become ill from radium exposure.
Dec 28, 2014 · Mae Keane, One Of The Last 'Radium Girls,' Dies At 107. Employees of the U.S. Radium Corp. paint numbers on the faces of wristwatches using dangerous radioactive paint. Dozens of women, known...
The Radium Girls left us all an extraordinary legacy. But who were they? In the book, The Radium Girls, Kate Moore introduces readers to these real women, who lived in New Jersey and in Illinois: separated by 800 miles, but united in their determination to stand up for themselves – and workers everywhere. Here she shares some further details ...
May 10, 2024 · One of the macabre fascinations with the “Radium Girls” story was how — assuming the women won the lawsuit — one might spend a quarter million dollars with only a year to live. One enterprising newspaper asked 10 randomly selected women what they would do.
Library of Congress Blogs | Blogs from the Library of Congress
The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2017.
