Radium Girls: Women spirit

The case described in this article is historical in many ways especially in the fields of health physics and the labor rights movement. The whole case revolves around the United States Radium Corporation. Founded in 1914 in Newark, New Jersey, this company produced uranium from carnotite ore and later moved into the business of producing radioluminescent paint Undark. They began to hire workers around 1917, mostly women, whose job was to paint watches with special glow-in-the-dark paint, where radium was one of the ingredients. The women were told that the paint was harmless and even encouraged to sharpen the brushes they used during work to with their tongues and fingers. Unaware of the danger some of the girls even painted their fingernails, faces and teeth, to surprise their boyfriends in the dark or just for fun. Naturally the girls received huge doses of radiation, which led to bone diseases and ultimately deaths. It is important to note that the owners and their scientists were familiar with the effects of radium and avoided the dangerous chemical with lead screens, masks and tongs. After a certain period of time many of the women began to suffer from fractures and necrosis of the jaw (later named the Radium Jaw condition). The United States Radium Corporation and some other watch-dial companies denied the fact that the compound used to paint watches was radioactive and rejected the claims, stating that the medical issues appeared from other medical conditions. Doctors, dentists, and researchers who were working on the radium cases received requests from the companies not to release their data.

In 1925 the chief medical examiner of Essex County, New Jersey published a report that stated that the cause of bone disease and aplastic anemia, and deaths of the workers was radium. Five of the survived woman sued their employer in a historical case that later established the right of individual workers who contract occupational diseases to sue their employers for this. The first worker who decided to sue was Grace Fryer, but it took her two years to find a lawyer that would take on U.S. Radium. Eventually she found one and was joined by four more ill workers. The whole case received a lot of media attention and so it became impossible to deny the true facts. This triggered big changes in the governing labor safety standards. The United States Radium was closed in 1927, mostly because of this legal case. The case itself was settled out of court in 1928. The company was considered to take too much time for settling the case intentionally, because most of the workers were too ill to survive and receive compensation. The settlement for each of the girls was $10,000 and a $600 per year annuity while they lived, plus coverage of all the medical and legal expenses.

The Radium Girls became a well known case and was referenced in many books and movies. The contamination was so serious that even today the graves of the workers can be detected with Geiger counter.