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| Employees of the U.S. Radium Corp. paint numbers on the faces of wristwatches using dangerous radioactive paint. |
I'd like to thank my
sister Lexi for bringing this week's topic to my attention, and hope you find
this tragic story as interesting as we did.
Beginning around
the turn of the century in America, the chemical element radium was popularly
seen as a scientific miracle that could cure a variety of ailments, including
cancer, upon ingestion of the so-called "liquid sunshine." Because
the magical substance glowed and fizzed, the radium craze saw its application
in numerous other capacities, most notably in the production of
glow-in-the-dark wrist watches. During the teens and the First World War
period, the watches were largely manufactured for the U.S. military due to
their obvious benefit in trench and combat conditions, before the 1920s gave
way to their popularity as a hot new gadget among civilians.
The watches were
manufactured in factories across America owned by the U.S. Radium Corp., which
were predominantly staffed by working-class young women. Bill Kovarik describes
the production conditions and process: "Racks of dials waiting to be
painted sat next to each woman's chair. They mixed up glue, water and radium
powder into a glowing greenish-white paint, and carefully applied it with a
camel hair brush to the dial numbers. After a few strokes, the brushes would
lose their shape, and the women couldn't paint accurately." He quotes
former employee Grace Fryer: "'Our instructors told us to point them with
our lips,' she said. 'I think I pointed mine with my lips about six times to
every watch dial. It didn't taste funny. It didn't have any taste, and I didn't
know it was harmful.'" The workers were thus regularly ingesting the radium
as part of their job, which reflects how harmless it was thought to be at the
time. In addition, they would even paint their nails and teeth with it to
surprise their boyfriends when the lights went out.
Continuing with
Grace's story, Kovarik describes how she came to realize that her time working
with the glowing substance proved detrimental to her health:
"Grace quit
the factory in 1920 for a better job as a bank teller. About two years later,
her teeth started falling out and her jaw developed a painful abscess. The
hazel eyes that had charmed her friends now clouded with pain. She consulted a
series of doctors, but none had seen a problem like it. X-ray photos of her
mouth and back showed the development of a serious bone decay. Finally, in July
1925, one doctor suggested that the problems may have been caused by her former
occupation. As she began to investigate the possibility, Columbia University
specialist Frederick Flynn, who said he was referred by friends, asked to
examine her. The results, he said, showed that her health was as good as his. A
consultant who happened to be present emphatically agreed. Later, Fryer found
out that this examination was part of a campaign of misinformation started by
the U.S. Radium Corporation. The Columbia specialist was not licensed to
practice medicine -- he was an industrial toxicologist on contract with her
former employer. The colleague had no medical training either -- he was a vice
president of U.S. Radium."
The Corporation
was thus an active conspirator in the illusion of radium's harmlessness, and we
know today that it was fully aware of its dangerous side effects as recognized
by scientists at the time. As with all significant historical moments, the intellectual
and moral conditions of the time played a major role in the outcome of Fryer's
and the Corporation's story. The realization that her health issues were
related to the circumstances of her former employment coincided with the latter
portion of the Progressive Movement in America, when intellectuals and
activists undertook the effort to cure societal ills that had been brought
about by rapid industrialization beginning in the last quarter of the
nineteenth century. This meant increasing professionalization and the
proliferation of organizations, in addition to a strong role played by women
spearheading those initiatives. In Orange, NJ, the location of one of the
Radium Corp. factories, a city health department official brought the New
Jersey Consumers League into an investigation of the mysterious deaths of four
radium factory workers between 1922 and 1924, who then enlisted other experts
to contribute to the study.
Kovarik describes
the lawsuit that followed from the investigation: "Although it meant
flying in the face of some medical opinion, Grace Fryer decided to sue U.S.
Radium, but it took her two years to find an attorney willing to take the case.
On May 18, 1927, Raymond Berry, a young Newark attorney, took the case on
contingency and filed a lawsuit in a New Jersey court on her behalf. Four other
women with severe medical problems quickly joined the lawsuit. They were Edna
Hussman, Katherine Schaub, and sisters Quinta McDonald and Albina Larice. Each
asked for $250,000 in compensation for medical expenses and pain. The five
eventually became known in newspaper articles carried in papers throughout the
U.S. and Europe as 'the Radium Girls.'"
Clipping from The Bee, Danville, Virginia, 1928
Another trend
that was becoming prominent around the time of the radium girls story and
Progressivism was the role of the media in influencing public opinion
surrounding news events. A publicity blizzard surrounded the story, led by New
York World editor Walter Lipmann, which outraged readers and shifted opinion in
favour of the victims while pressurizing the U.S. Radium Corp. to settle the
case. Kovarik describes how the story was able to reach French scientist Marie
Curie, who had discovered radium: "Curie heard about the reaction and, on
June 4, said: "I am not a doctor, so I cannot venture an opinion on
whether the New Jersey girls will die. But from newspaper descriptions of the
manner in which they worked, I think it imperative to change the method of
using radium."Curie herself died of radium poisoning in 1934."
Eventually, an
out-of-court settlement was reached between the Corp. and the radium girls, who
received annual payments while they lived and had all medical and legal
expenses paid by the company. In addition, a conference endorsed by numerous
public officials including Eleanor Roosevelt called for the establishment of
two committees: one to investigate existing conditions and another to recommend
the best known means of protection for workers. A Public Health Service
official, James P. Leake, commended the Consumers League and others who had
worked on behalf of public health and worker safety. "By focusing public
attention on some of these horrible examples," Leake said, "the
broader problems of disease prevention... can be greatly reduced. It was so in
the tetra-ethyl lead work." He added: "The martyrdom of a few may
save many." Thus, while the five radium girls eventually succumbed to
their exposure during the 1920s and 1930s, their experiences set a new
precedent for legal working conditions in America in addition to a standard for
public health.
Thanks for
reading,
Delany (@DLeitchHistory on Twitter)
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