Radium girls
I read a disturbing article yesterday about the Radium Girls. These were a group of women who worked in the clock factories during World War 1, painting watch and clock dials with radium paint, a paint that glowed in the dark.
It was a sought-after job, paying up to three times more than other factory jobs at the time. The girls were made to feel important because most of the watches at that time were going to the military.
Radium was not considered dangerous in small amounts back then. The girls would paint about 200 clock faces each day, dipping their brushes into their mouths to get the fine point required to paint the lettering, ingesting radium as they did so. They thought it was fun that they glowed in the dark each night, all the while being reassured, that the substance they were working with, was safe. Some women even painted their teeth so that they would glow at night. Lies purported at the time even suggested ingesting a small quantity of radium was beneficial to one’s health.
It wasn’t long though, before the girls started getting sick with what became known as radium jaw. It started with a toothache, which quickly led to anaemia, followed by bone fractures and disintegration of their jaws. In one horrific case, a dentist first removed one tooth, followed by a second, before the entire jaw was pulled out of the woman’s mouth.
By 1927 more than 50 women had died, while others suffered ongoing illnesses and permanent injuries. To add to their indignity, many of these first deaths were attribute to syphilis, an illness, which, in its later stages, can also cause deformities to the face.
Initially radium wasn’t suspected as the culprit. An interesting quote from the article I read: It took the death of a male employee of the radium firm for experts to finally take the issue more seriously. In 1925 a doctor discovered that radium had deposited in the women’s bones and created a test that proved it was the radium that was poisoning the factory workers. However, that finding was too late for many of them.
A few of the girls took a court case against the company but it wasn’t until eight appeals that they finally had victory in 1939. This case led to the introduction of new safety standards of dial painters and those working in other radio-active fields. Later, the US Congress passed a law giving workers the right to compensation for occupational illnesses.
This story brings up so many issues. How many times are we told something is safe? Safe, safe, safe, until it is proved it isn’t. Even as children, our teeth were filled with mercury. Some of us were given the toxic substance to play with in our hands, while the dental nurses prepared the filling mix. Then there is asbestos and now the latest, one of the Covid vaccines, withdrawn because it is known to cause a rare illness in some individuals. There have been many, many examples in between. Look at the controversy in New Plymouth, where many of the workers of the herbicide factory, contracted cancer. And it wasn’t just them, but their offspring and their offspring’s children as well. And the talcum powder manufacturers accused of causing cancers from the use of the powder on babies.
But the common thread amongst most of these is the lack of accountability – the denials, going right back to those Radium Girls – eight appeals before they finally had justice.
Companies are more than happy to make their fortunes off their ‘’wonderful’’ products, but not so quick to front up when these products are found to be health-destroying.
But even worse, in my eyes, in all of this, is where people are forced into putting something into their bodies, such as when vaccinations were made compulsory. Let people make their own choices. Another is the fluoridation of a town’s water supply. Let the people who want fluoridation, do so independently, but don’t make every person ingest this.
I feel for the poor radium girls. The disease must have produced a horrific ending for many of them. They thought they were doing their country a favour, when all the time they were signing their own death warrants.