Times have changed, and with them our understanding of toxicity. In the 1920’s “on sale were radium jockstraps and lingerie, radium butter, radium milk, radium toothpaste (guaranteeing a brighter smile with every brushing) and even a range of Radior cosmetics”. The radium factory girls wore “their good dresses to the plant so that they would become luminous when they went out to parties later.” After all, radium was safe. Except radium was never safe – and that had been known since very soon after its discovery in 1898. But no-one thought to tell the girls working with radium every day.
“They put the brush to their lips, … dipped it in the radium … and painted the dials. It was a ‘lip, dip, paint routine’ … all day long”. The idea of being in a room with an unshielded radioactive source I find frightening enough, but to put a brush that has been in contact with radium into one’s mouth just fills me with a visceral horror. But much worse was to come.
The book introduces you to several groups of vivacious, attractive young women, aged fourteen to about thirty. All with their lives ahead of them, their hopes for the future, their loves, their friends, their community – and then describes how, one by one, they sicken, prematurely age and die. They suffered months, years of excruciating pain, mouths filled with pus, teeth dropping out, jawbone disintegrating, huge bone tumours, physical deformities … And that was nowhere near the worst.
The women could not get a diagnosis for what ailed them. It was apparent that something was wrong: “Many of the girls I knew and had worked with in the plant began to die off alarmingly fast ... They were all young women, in good health. It seemed odd.” But they could not get the factory executives to take them seriously, nor the doctors or dentists to really investigate the sicknesses: “they didn’t share notes, and so each case was viewed in isolation”.
And every visit to the doctor or dentist cost money – lots of money. The sick women could no longer work – indeed some were fired for looking ill – so money became an increasingly acute problem.
Then in the Great Depression, their husbands and fathers lost their work. In Ottawa “the women had split the town—and the disapproval went right to the top, with ‘business interests, politicians, and the clergy’ all against the women bringing suit” against one of the few remaining employers in the region.
The radium companies lied, back-tracked, and did everything they could to discredit the women. Their so-called company doctor was a fraud, they hid evidence, and refused to put safety measures into place for the women still working in their factories.
The women’s fight for justice took years, time that many of the women did not have. Their tenacity and heroism in a fight against overwhelming odds was awe inspiring. They were not seeking a huge pay out, but an acknowledgement of their suffering, and funds to cover their medical expenses. They continued to fight through the courts, even when literally on their death beds. Some helped from beyond the grave.
This book made me sick to the stomach to read what these women had to endure – and so, so angry – but through their fight and dedication, we have stringent safety measures today covering all use of radioactive substances. They left their mark on legislation relating to occupational health, on international nuclear treaties, and on our understanding of the health risks of radioactivity. The Radium Girls left behind a monumental legacy – not just for their colleagues and their towns, but for the whole world.
I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

Greetings Bookworms,

I am super stoked to discuss today’s book! *I received a complimentary copy of The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore from the publisher for review consideration. All gushing is 100% reflective of my true opinion. I’m just THAT excited about this book.*

A little bit of background: my husband is from a small town in Illinois. It’s not close enough to Chicago to be considered a suburb, but not really part of what’s considered “Central Illinois” either. It’s known to locals as the Illinois Valley, but that doesn’t mean a whole lot to people not from the area. I grew up in a Chicago suburb that had zero history. I mean, the “historical district” is a set of houses built in the 1960s. There are nearby suburbs with more history, but my town had been farmland for a very long time and it is seriously lacking in old time charm. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always been so drawn to places with old brick downtown sections and interesting historical tidbits. My husband’s corner of Illinois is chock full of these types of stories, which I’ve been gobbling up since we started dating 14 years ago.

One of the stories he told me took place in the town right next door to his in Ottawa, Illinois. We were driving past the old Westclox factory one day (which is technically in Peru, another nearby town, but I digress) and he told me that back in the day, the dials of the watches made for Westclox were painted with radioactive paint and that it made a lot of employees sick. (To be fair to Westclox, these were third party dial painting operations, though, I’d be surprised if they didn’t have some problems with the radiation too, because it’s friggin’ RADIATION.) The mysterious sickness was due in large part to the fact that the workers were instructed to put the paintbrushes in their mouths. I was SURE my husband had gotten part of the story wrong, because seriously. I don’t put paint in my mouth, let alone radioactive paint. I thought it had to be an urban legend.

It. Was. Not. An. Urban. Legend. The Radium Girls by Kate Moore is a fascinating account of what went on in these radium dial factories, both in New Jersey and small town Illinois. Women in the 1910s-1930s were employed in factories painting radium infused glow-in-the-dark material on watch dials and other clock faces. Toward the beginning of this time period, radium, in small amounts, was considered to be safe, and possibly even healthy. Workers were instructed to put those radioactive paint brushes into their mouths in order to get a precise point for the fine detail work. Yes. This is a real thing that happened. I’m still trying to process it.

Of course, a few years into this practice, it became clear that all was not safe and healthy where radium ingestion is concerned. The girls (and I say “girls” because some were as young as 14 and they usually left the company by their early 20s) began coming down with mysterious tooth and jaw ailments, muscle pains, and scores of other symptoms. And, as corporations are wont to do when they’re in jeopardy of losing a crap load of money, they tried to blame anything else (STDs, bad luck, other diseases) for the girls’ ailments rather than take responsibility.

The book covers the processes used in the factories, some rather gruesome details about the effects the women with radium poisoning suffered, and the legal battles that followed in order to get the women some compensation for having bits of jawbone fall out all over the place. It all just hit SO close to home considering that I’ve spent a decent amount of time in Ottawa. I’ve driven past Saint Columba, the church many of the girls attended, oodles of times. In later years, Argonne National Laboratory began doing followup studies on the remains of the women who perished and survivors of Radium Dial. The cancer rate for survivors was something like 80%, and they were cancers so rare that they couldn’t have been caused by anything but the radium poisoning. The remains of early victims have been studied as well and are, to this day, highly radioactive. It’s estimated they will be for another 1500-3000 years.

For the love, you guys, READ THIS BOOK. It was amazing and informative and it never dragged or got too bogged down in the science the way some non-fiction does. The human stories abound. It’ll break your heart. You’ll learn things. It’s amazing. The Radium Girls by Kate Moore. All the stars.

Kate Moore’s Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women turned out to be a timely book for me, for two reasons. First, I read it the weekend before I had a dentist appointment. (This turned out to be a bad idea.) Second, and more seriously, Radium Girls tells a story that demonstrates in no uncertain terms that American workers need government regulations and agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. Before these agencies existed, several companies poisoned hundreds of women with radioactive paint and fought them hard in court to keep from paying their medical bills and funeral expenses.

Between World War I and World War II, companies like the US Radium Company and Radium Dials filled millions of orders for luminescent clock and watch dials. At the time, the ingredient that made the paint used on these dials glow was radium. We know now that radium, if swallowed, is used by the body like calcium. Radium heads straight for the bones, where it bombards the body with radioactivity. Before World War I, scientists knew that that radium could cause burns if it came in contact with skin for a few hours. The men who were hired to mix the paint had rules in place to prevent them from overexposure. The women who actually painted with this stuff, however, did not.

Women were hired and paid by the dial. They were taught to use small brushes to carefully paint the tiny numbers on the dials. To make the best point on the brush, they would use their lips. For every dial, the women would ingest small amounts of radium multiple times. When the women went home, they often found that their clothes, shoes, and skin would glow in the dark. When they started to get sick with horrific tooth, jaw, and bone problems, doctors and dentists had no idea what was wrong with these women. Some suspected phossy jaw, an old occupational disease that caused bone necrosis in the jaw due to exposure to phosphorus because the teeth and jaws of the Radium Girls seemed to rot faster the more they tried to remove necrotic material. (Seriously, these women died terrible, terrible deaths. Readers who don’t have strong stomachs may have to skip sections.)

New Jersey (where the biggest radium dial companies were located) had a law that recognized that employers were liable for compensation for occupational diseases. Unfortunately for these women, radium poisoning wasn’t one of the listed diseases. Worse, the statute of limitations was ridiculously short. On top of that, the radium companies were so wealthy, few lawyers were willing to help the Radium Girls once they started fighting for compensation.

Most of Radium Girls follows the ins and outs of their legal battles in the 1920s and 30s. Because Moore spent the opening chapters of this book introducing readers to individual women and their husbands and families, reading about their legal struggles and deaths becomes especially infuriating and poignant, all at the same time. Seeing doors (literal and figurative) slammed in their faces filled me with outrage on their behalf. And because we now know what radium does to the body (Moore explains the effects for readers who don’t), we know that most of these women are doomed and their struggles are races against time.

Radium Girls should be required reading in a time when the White House and Congress are working on rolling back funding for and regulations from OSHA and the EPA. Those regulations are in place for very good reasons. Anyone who argues that companies won’t pollute or harm their workers are kidding themselves. As US Radium and Radium Dials show us, profits are king to big business—even when their products cause their employees to glow in the dark and slowly poison those employees from the inside out.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley for review consideration.

First of all, thank you Sourcebooks and Netgalley for allowing me to read this ARC. The following review will be based on my opinion of this nonfiction novel. I will list my dislikes, followed by my likes, and then my personal thoughts.

This is a nonfiction about a company of women, who painted dials for clocks, watches, etc. This is a true account of their lives and the occupational hazard of handling the element Radium. Which we know today to be a dangerous element. It gives a good representation of what the women endured while employed through various companies that painted dials. Due to this case, this helped lead the way for groups like OSHA to come into play much later.

What are my dislikes?
1. I couldn't find anything.

What are my likes?
1. These were real women. The author did an excellent job with bringing these women back to life. The author hit it out of the park.
2. She cited her sources on multiple pages.
3. It left me feeling quite emotional. Just on the human quality. These weren't just workers, these were women with lives.
4. It makes you aware of why the EPA and OSHA exists.


As for my personal thoughts?

There is a part towards the end of the book that was gut-wrenching to read. The love of husbands and family members were apparent in this body of work. The author took her time and studied all the intricate problems of the roaring 20's and beyond. Do I think companies still try to weasel their way out of paying employee's worker's comp? Yes. That still happens today. I feel that not much has changed. Yes, we have groups that are supposed to protect the employees but I still don't think they do a good enough job. These women risked their lives for watches. If a company fails to protect their employees, they shouldn't be around. That's just my opinion. And you would be amazed with how many companies fail to keep workers safe, even today. I hope Moore continues to write more cases like this. Even though this was an emotional read, Moore has clearly found her niche. Once again, thank you for bringing the Radium Girls to life and explaining what they were about.

4.5 Stars

Imagine you have your first job. Imagine how proud you are. Or maybe it is not your first job, but it is a fun job where you get to socialize as long as you get your job done. A job that allows you to do something important for your country. Imagine you are helping your friends and sisters obtain a job as well. Imagine you work with a super cool substance which glows in the dark. A substance you believe is safe - your employer tells you is safe. A substance that one young woman painted on her own teeth before a date. A substance that Thomas Edison deemed dangerous. A substance you paint on. A substance that some women were know to eat the paint because they enjoyed it.

Now, Imagine how painful it must be to have your teeth fall out, to have your jaw come out, to have the bones in your face disintegrate. Imagine your bones begin to hurt so bad you can barely move. Imagine one leg suddenly becoming 4 inches shorter than the other. Imagine bleeding to death. Imagine giving birth to a stillborn baby. Imagine going from being young and healthy to being dead in less than a week.

The poor women in this book did not have to imagine any of these things because they lived this. This book is about the young women who wanted to do their part to help the war effort during World War I. These women worked in radium factories painting the faces on clocks. They were working with a luminous material and were come to be called as the "shining girls" They took a tremendous amount of pride in their jobs and many liked that they could "glow" in the dark. But then one by one they began having dental problems. The dental problems were only the beginning.

The women began to die horribly painful deaths. Their loved ones left with questions unanswered. Most of the women were misdiagnosed in the beginning. Eventually their deaths became connected and the dangers of radium and radium poisoning were known. Thus began a huge scandal and a fight for workers rights.

The writing of this book was captivating. I found myself absorbed in these women's stories. Even as they were dying, these women tried hard to complete their doctors tests in order to determine if radium was to blame for their impending death. The Author did a wonderful job in bringing these women's stories to life. To show how they and their families had to battle for their rights. How a company can deny accountability and turn their back on these women. How their loved ones and lawyers fought for them and their rights.

Wowza. What a wonderfully informative, sad, hopeful and interesting book. I learned a lot.I love when a book makes me think, feel, and learn. I had all of these things going on when I read this book. I highly recommend this book.

I would like to thank Kate Moore and Net Galley for allowing me to read this book.
I could not put this book down, it is a must read. I kept hoping and praying for relief for these beautiful young women. What a tragedy! All the suffering they endured to be pushed aside and ignored by the government while a company keeps lying and is deceitful to those who helped it grow just so they can continue making money. Thank you again Kate Moore for taking the time to tell their story and breathe life into the ghost girls and kudos to all who helped them in their plight.

This is one of those books that will stick with you long after you read it. It is also a book that was impossible to read for long stretches at a time. Not because the content wasn’t interesting and engrossing, but because it was so heart-wrenching and actually made me mad as hell at points.

Radium Girls tells the story of the radium dial painters at the beginning of the 20th century. Not much was known about radium, this new product that offered so many different things. People thought it was a miracle cure and a beauty product and so much more. Radium paint was used on clocks and military instruments to make them glow and was a growing industry. Radium was touted for its beneficial properties because no one believed it was harmful.

The girls hired to be radium dial painters believed themselves lucky. They had good paying jobs in an industry that seemed to be going somewhere. They were young, beautiful and carefree and now had spending money of their own. Every day they came to work and dipped their brushes into the radium paint, lipped them to create a point and painted their dials. Dip, lip, point over and over again day after day never knowing that what they were putting in their mouths was a poison that would destroy their bodies and lives. They were told radium would make them glow which it did. They glowed in the dark from all the radium dust that settled on them during the day. They were told it was safe which it was not.

The radium girls found that they started developing tooth aches and pains in their limbs or backs. When they went to the dentist to have a tooth pulled it would not heal. Plaster casts on limbs did nothing to stop the pain and the degeneration. Doctors were stumped by what was going on with them. Multiple doctors and dentists tried to help the girls, but no one really suspected the radium for years. The companies making radium dials definitely didn’t inform doctors or their staff that radium was a poison even though many of them knew it was. It took years of medical appointments, doctor investigations, horrible deaths and numerous lawsuits before any real progress was made to help the girls debilitated by the radium poisoning.

What galled me the most about this story was the reaction from the companies who employed the girls. These companies blatantly lied about radium poisoning, dismissed the girls even though they clearly had horrible medical issues, and did everything in their power to make sure they had no legal responsibility for their actions. It was a bit fascinating to see the lengths they would go to cover up and deny the information on the harmful effects of radium. Clearly they only had the company’s bottom line as a concern and not the health of their employees or the moral responsibility they should have had. It was actually satisfying to read that they were finally found responsible for the radium poisoning and that laws were eventually changed so that things like this couldn’t happen again.

This was a fascinating and deeply disturbing look at a part of history I was not aware of. I highly recommend it. Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book.

I don't even know where to begin with reviewing this book! It was fascinating, yet upsetting at the same time. The Radium Girls tells the story of the dial painters who, after initially enjoying the work, found their health dramatically failing. The book tells the story of a number of the dial painters, and their work, family life and declining health. It tells the story of the company they were working for and the benefits and pitfalls that came with the job. Doctors and dentists who treated the women, and their fight to get the illness linked to the radium they were ingesting through the technique of lip, dip, paint as they did the intricate job of painting the dials. If you don't read another non fiction book this year, you'd certainly be missing out if you pass this one by. Highly recommended. With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.

Kate Moore's non-fiction book, The Radium Girls, is a compelling read. She explores the true story about how women were poisoned with radium and how corporations tried to cover it up. Reading about all of their ailments was very difficult. This book is well researched and reads like a narrative. I do think the book is rather long. However, I am glad to have read it.

I have never once heard about the Radium Girls tragedy, which is strange because I am an avid reader of history. Therefore, I was intrigued by the premise of this book. I did a quick internet search on this topic and was aghast upon learning that this really happened...that such a horrific death sentence was meted out to these innocent young women in the early 1900s simply for the glory of a buck. True, the owners of the Radium Dial Company might not have known the severity of the radioactive properties of the glow paint used to apply the numbers on watches and clocks. However, once the girls started getting sick, the bosses tried their level best to hide the fact of the radium poisoning since business was booming. It's said that if you stand over the graves of these radium poisoning victims with a geiger counter, to this day it will react wildly. This is not surprising since it's said that the radioactivity will last for roughly 1,600 years!

The author succeeded in writing a beautiful story about a horrid subject, as she so humanized the affected women. I was swept away by her atmospheric description of the 1920s, a much simpler time. To hear about the close knit families, their love of the Parish Church and the girls' excitement at working in the "watch studio" was a glorious read. The thought of these lovely young women with the whole of their lives ahead of them taught to put their paint brushes in their mouths to make the thin bristles more pointy...thinking of the poisonous radium unknowingly destroying their bodies...it's such a poignant and heart-wrenching story to read. Yet, the author somehow writes of it majestically with beauty and compassion. Ironically, it made this book one of the most delightful I have read in some time.

Intermittently while reading this book, I was compelled to perform internet searches of these "Radium Girls," as they mounted a very hard fought court battle for money damages against Radium Dial Company. It made for splashy newspaper articles at the time, so there are pictures available online that will put a face on these unfortunate victims. There is also a documentary on YouTube about them that was quite fascinating. I cannot believe that I never heard about these women who helped change safety standards on the job. Many of their bodies were exhumed for testing decades after their deaths, and lucky survivors continued to submit themselves for testing twice a year as well. This experience in history served to provide information on how the human body withstands radioactivity.

This is a very important book in our history, and it should be made into a major motion picture film. I'm surprised it hasn't happened already!

I first heard about these women when I read The Poisoner's Handbook. And it stuck with me, hard. These poor women had no idea what they were getting themselves into, and how hard they had to fight is awful, and heart breaking.

This book is really well put together, and in depth. Upsettingly so. It's not an easy read. But it's such an important moment in history, a time when getting hurt on the job was just par for the course, and suck it up, buttercup. These women were dying from the inside out, and had to fight for even the smallest bit of justice.

Such a worthwhile read. Such a difficult read.

Wow! I had never learned about "radium" paint having been used in US workshops. A bit of history left untaught during my time in school. A very horrifyingly sad piece of history too. Kate Moore brings these women's lives and trials to the forefront. The book starts off more like a documentary of facts, but around the second half of the book the story grows and envelops a saga of sorrow, spirit, strength, hope and ultimately death. The book could have been improved upon, it became somewhat repetitive in trying to convey just how awful things were. A look at history that I for one will never forget. I found myself needing to put it down on several occasions, it's very difficult to read while crying. Haunting.

I first heard of the radium girls after reading my usual crime fiction fare with a book set in 1920’s New York. They weren’t a large part of the book, but the covering up of what the radium was doing to them was a key part of the plot. So, when I saw The Radium Girls, a work of non-fiction that told the story of these women, I jumped at the chance to read it.

I am really glad I did because it shone a light on the lives of a group of incredibly brave women, some of whom literally shone thanks to the radium that stuck to their skin and made its way into their bodies and bones. Nowadays, of course, we think how could it happen but, in the 20’s radium was seen as a cure-all and nothing to be afraid of.  And when people in authority told people without it things, they tended to believe what they were told.

Radium was used in so many products, including luminous paint – which is what the women used to paint watch dials and instrument panels, pointing the tip of the brush with their tounges and consuming radium each time. It is no wonder they got ill. The fact that it took so long to link their illnesses to radium is perhaps more surprising – but no one considered it for a long time because of the variety of symptoms they suffered through.
Perhaps if the companies the women worked for had been honest about what they knew about the dangers of radium, it might have been clearer sooner, but they weren’t – resulting in the deaths of hundred (thousands possibly) of women. Reading about it is tragic but also left me shocked and angry by the behaviour of their employers.  I know it was a long time ago, but it doesn’t make what they did any more understandable or forgivable.

Most of the women were young, teenagers even, with their lives ahead of them. Many were dead before they reached 30, their bodies eaten away from the inside and in excruciating pain.  How any of them managed to fight back against the companies that had condemned them to death is amazing. But fight they did, changing the law and paving the way for better workers rights along the way.

The Radium Girls takes you on their journey, focusing on specific women who were key in the fight. This made it real and it made it personal. If I’m honest,  I read on, hoping for the same miracle the women were waiting for – a cure.  It made compelling reading.  I have to say I wish the writing was a little better – at times it felt a little repetitive and at others that my heart strings were being tugged at when they didn’t need to be because I was already emotionally involved.

Whilst this didn’t take away from the story itself, which was powerful and still has lessons for us I think about corporate greed and how little workers are sometime respected, it does mean that I liked vs. loved this one. Still, a recommended read.

In this dystopian novel by Kate Moore, women are becoming disabled and dying horrible deaths from the effects of radiation while the companies employing them lie about test results and continue to make excuses for why they are not responsible for what is happening to their workers. Meanwhile, government agencies trip over themselves denying their ability to do anything about the issue.

“Under state law, it (Department of Labor) had no authority to stop an industrial process even if it was harmful. As a result of these factors, the department now gave the plant a clean bill of health – and completely stopped looking into the dial-painters’ illnesses.”

Oh wait! This isn’t fiction! This actually happened! And Ms. Moore gives us a bittersweetly detailed look at how these women went from lively young ladies to old crones losing parts of their jaws, growing tumors, and eventually dying. Following their stories is heartbreaking and a startling reminder that a person cannot expect their employer or government to look out for the individual’s best interests. While taking place almost 100 years ago, this story feels very relevant and timely.

The Radium Girls is non-fiction at its finest: a really interesting book that teaches me about a topic I’d known nothing about. In this case, it’s all about radium. Specifically, it’s about the lives of the “radium girls,” young women who got jobs painting numbers on clock faces with radium-based paint in the WWI era. Why radium? It glowed in the dark.


The famous Marie Curie (along with husband Pierre) discovered radium in 1898. She called it “my beautiful radium.” It produced a glow which “stirred us with ever-new emotion and enchantment.” Radium was claimed to restore youth to the elderly, making “old men young.” It shone “like a good deed in a naughty world,” and was dubbed “liquid sunshine.” You could buy radium-infused lingerie, radium butter, radium milk, and more. One girl painted radium all over her teeth one night before a date for a brilliant smile. After all, the element now used in radiation cancer treatments was said to be “harmless to humans and easy to use.”

The residue from radium extraction was sold to schools and playgrounds, where it was mixed with sand. It was proclaimed “most hygienic … more beneficial than the mud of world-renowned curative baths.”


The girls covered in this book got jobs working at the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation. Many were young — one was just fifteen. The job paid well for the time: “it was the elite job for the poor working girls.” The girls sat along long tables, each with her own pot of “Undark” (the name for the luminous paint). In order to get the fine point needed to paint the small faces, the girls continually put the brushes in their mouths to create a sharp point. This was calling “lip-pointing.”

At the end of their shifts, the girls were brushed down in an attempt to recover radium dust so it could be used again. Still, much remained ... (complete review on my blog)

A beautifully written book that explores an important piece of history. The Radium Girls whole separated by miles wanted nothing more than independence, fun, families yet became so much more because of their illnesses. I will never be the same after reading these stories and the struggle to find what was causing their illnesses and to let the public know Radium wasn't the magical cure all they thought it was.

Even though this story is heartbreaking, I am so glad Kate Moore took the time to research and write about these brave women. Her writing style let me, as a reader, know who these women were. They were so young, and they didn't have any idea what was happening to them or what was causing it. They were truly heroes in the industrial world! This book will stay with me for a long time and I will always remember "The Radium Girls." Read It! Highly Recommend!

I received this ARC from netgalley.com in exchange for a review.

Wow. Lip, Dip, Paint. They were unknowingly putting Radium directly into their bodies.

Such an incredible story, these people suffered and endured such tradegy so that our modern society can live and work in relative comfort and health. This book/topic is a definite must read.

The book is packed with historical references and data, it is easy to read and understand.

4☆

Moore set out to do justice to the lives of the women who lost their lives to industry and she succeeds. She doesn't pull any punches. The book is hard to read in the we see what these women experienced.

"When one of the greatest radium authorities in the world tells you that you have no need to worry, quite simply, you don't."

I knew a little bit about the radium girls, but nothing beyond the fact that they glowed after working all day.

In the early 20th century radium was discovered, and it became the new "it" thing to use and have. All types of things from medicine to things in the home were advertised to have radium in them. It's truly amazing that even though so many people knew it was dangerous still sold it as the thing to have and when it backfired the amount of cover-ups and back tracking by the companies is absolutely disgusting.

"All of the Katherine's life, radium had been a magnificent cure-all, treating not just cancer, but hay fever, gout, constipation.. anything you could think of. Pharmacists sold radioactive dressings and pills; there was also radium clinics and spas."

In the 1910's companies started popping up in america that painted clock dials using radium to make them glow. It was a good paying job and many women started working there including girls as young as fourteen. They would paint the radium on the clock's using a "lip, dip, paint" method, where they would literally be putting the radium covered paint brush in there mouth in order to make the tip as fine as possible so they would only get paint on the numbers and no where else. They were told this was completely safe, and that the small amount of radium they were getting was good for them and was actually going to make them healthier.

"We used to paint our eyebrows, our lips, and our eyelashes, and then look at ourselves in the darkroom."

But the truth was they weren't just ingesting the radium, it was going everywhere else as well which they could see when they went to the companies dark room. They literally glowed from head to toe, and they thought it was great fun. Some of them even purposefully would wear there best dresses to work in order to be able to glow that night when they went out on the town. Some companies even encourage the women to take some home in order to practice with it, meaning not only were they getting exposed to it at work, but now at home as well also putting their families at risk.

Most of the women didn't start getting sick until after they had left the company or if they did start showing signs of being sick while working they were let go. This doesn't mean that they didn't have concerns about the radium though, as time went on more and more of them started to notice things and questioned the companies. But time and time again they were assured that the radium was harmless and that the other women were sick for reasons outside of work.

"Hope. That was all he really wanted, to know that there was light at the end of the tunnel; that they could get through this and come out the other side into a shining day, and another one, and another day after that."

Another big problem was is that the small town doctors as well as big city doctors had no idea what was wrong with the ones that were sick. So instead the women were spending hundred of dollars on treatment that not only wasn't helping, but at times was making things even worse. The women and their families were determined to find out what was happening to them and how it could be fixed, no matter the price. Thousands of dollars were spent with no hope in sight for the women to be pain free or to even survive it seemed. With the help of determined city doctors and a lawyers that were determined to win their cases.
They were finally able to have a little bit of relief financially and physically. Some were even able to make it past their 70's if they were able to catch it early enough to prevent it from doing any major damage. Most though would die young, and the radium would even affect their family members.


"YOU FIGHT AND YOU FALL AND YOU GET UP AND FIGHT SOME MORE. But there will always come a day when you cannot fight another minute more."

Thank you to the women who gave everything they had to fight the companies, who didn't stop even when they were on their deathbeds. Just so there families and friends that they had worked with at the factory would have something in return for all the pain and judgment they had deserved. Who made it possible for things to be the way they are now in the workplace with the safety precautions and the benefits after getting sick from the job.