![All women or girls using radium paint with no protection or warnings in 1922, from- USRadiumGirls-Argonne1,ca1922-23-150dpi (cropped)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/All_women_or_girls_using_radium_paint_with_no_protection_or_warnings_in_1922%2C_from-_USRadiumGirls-Argonne1%2Cca1922-23-150dpi_%28cropped%29.jpg)
The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted
radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with
self-luminous
''Advaita Vedanta'' (; sa, अद्वैत वेदान्त, ) is a Hindu sādhanā, a path of spiritual discipline and experience, and the oldest extant tradition of the orthodox Hindu school Vedānta. The term ''Advaita'' (li ...
paint. The incidents occurred at three different factories: one in
Orange, New Jersey
The City of Orange is a township in Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2010 U.S. census, the township's population was 30,134, reflecting a decline of 2,734 (−8.3%) from the 32,868 counted in 2000.
Orange was original ...
, beginning around 1917; one in
Ottawa, Illinois
Ottawa is a city located at the confluence of the navigable Illinois River and Fox River in LaSalle County, Illinois, United States. The Illinois River is a conduit for river barges and connects Lake Michigan at Chicago, to the Mississippi Riv ...
, beginning in the early 1920s; and a third facility in
Waterbury, Connecticut
Waterbury is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut on the Naugatuck River, southwest of Hartford and northeast of New York City. Waterbury is the second-largest city in New Haven County, Connecticut. According to the 2020 US Census, in 20 ...
, also in the 1920s.
After being told that the paint was harmless, the women in each facility ingested deadly amounts of
radium
Radium is a chemical element with the symbol Ra and atomic number 88. It is the sixth element in group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals. Pure radium is silvery-white, but it readily reacts with nitrogen (rather t ...
after being instructed to "point" their brushes on their lips in order to give them a fine tip; some also painted their fingernails, face and teeth with the glowing substance. The women were instructed to point their brushes in this way because using rags or a water rinse caused them to use more time and material, as the paint was made from powdered radium,
gum arabic
Gum arabic, also known as gum sudani, acacia gum, Arabic gum, gum acacia, acacia, Senegal gum, Indian gum, and by other names, is a natural gum originally consisting of the hardened sap of two species of the '' Acacia'' tree, ''Senegalia sen ...
and water.
Five of the women in New Jersey challenged their employer in a case over the right of individual workers who contract
occupational disease
An occupational disease is any chronic ailment that occurs as a result of work or occupational activity. It is an aspect of occupational safety and health. An occupational disease is typically identified when it is shown that it is more prevalen ...
s to sue their employers under New Jersey's occupational injuries law, which at the time had a two-year statute of limitations, but settled out of court in 1928. Five women in Illinois who were employees of the Radium Dial Company (which was unaffiliated with the United States Radium Corporation) sued their employer under Illinois law, winning damages in 1938.
United States Radium Corporation
![Undark (Radium Girls) advertisement, 1921, retouched](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Undark_%28Radium_Girls%29_advertisement%2C_1921%2C_retouched.png)
From 1917 to 1926, U.S. Radium Corporation, originally called the
Radium Luminous Material Corporation -
The United States Radium Corporation was a company, most notorious for its operations between the years 1917 to 1926 in Orange, New Jersey, in the United States that led to stronger worker protection laws. After initial success in developing a ...
, was engaged in the extraction and purification of
radium
Radium is a chemical element with the symbol Ra and atomic number 88. It is the sixth element in group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals. Pure radium is silvery-white, but it readily reacts with nitrogen (rather t ...
from
carnotite
Carnotite is a potassium uranium vanadate radioactive mineral with chemical formula K2( U O2)2( VO4)2·3 H2O. The water content can vary and small amounts of calcium, barium, magnesium, iron, and sodium are often present.
Occurrence
Carnotite ...
ore to produce
luminous paint
Luminous paint or luminescent paint is paint that exhibits luminescence. In other words, it gives off Visible spectrum, visible light through fluorescence, phosphorescence, or radioluminescence. There are three types of luminous paints: fluoresc ...
s, which were marketed under the brand name "
Undark
Undark was a trade name for luminous paint made with a mixture of radioactive radium and zinc sulfide, as produced by the U.S. Radium Corporation between 1917 and 1938. It was used primarily in watch and clock dials. The people working in t ...
". The ore was mined from the
Paradox Valley
Paradox Valley is a basin located in Montrose County in the U.S. state of Colorado. The dry, sparsely populated valley is named after the apparently paradoxical course of the Dolores River—instead of flowing down the length of the valley, th ...
in
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...
and other "Undark mines" in
Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...
. As a
defense contractor
The arms industry, also known as the arms trade, is a global industry which manufactures and sells weapons and military technology. It consists of a commercial industry involved in the research and development, engineering, production, and serv ...
, U.S. Radium was a major supplier of
radioluminescent
Radioluminescence is the phenomenon by which light is produced in a material by bombardment with ionizing radiation such as alpha particles, beta particles, or gamma rays. Radioluminescence is used as a low level light source for night illumina ...
watches to the military. Their plant in Orange, New Jersey, employed as many as 300 workers, mainly women, to paint radium-lit watch faces and instruments, misleading them that it was safe.
Radiation exposure
U.S. Radium Corporation (USRC) hired approximately 70 women to perform various tasks including handling radium, while the owners and the scientists familiar with the effects of radium carefully avoided any exposure to it themselves. Chemists at the plant used lead screens, masks and tongs.
USRC had distributed literature to the medical community describing the "injurious effects" of radium. In spite of this knowledge, a number of similar deaths had occurred by 1925, including the company's chief chemist, Dr. Edwin E. Leman, and several female workers. The similar circumstances of their deaths prompted investigations by Dr. Harrison Martland, County Physician of
Newark
Newark most commonly refers to:
* Newark, New Jersey, city in the United States
* Newark Liberty International Airport, New Jersey; a major air hub in the New York metropolitan area
Newark may also refer to:
Places Canada
* Niagara-on-the ...
.
An estimated 4,000 workers were hired by corporations in the U.S. and Canada to paint watch faces with radium. At USRC, each of the painters mixed her own paint in a small
crucible
A crucible is a ceramic or metal container in which metals or other substances may be melted or subjected to very high temperatures. While crucibles were historically usually made from clay, they can be made from any material that withstands te ...
, and then used
camel hair brush
A camel-hair brush is a type of paintbrush with soft bristles made from natural hairs, usually squirrel. Actual camel hair is not a suitable material, although historically camel was used for ancient Chinese ink brushes (and for camel hair cloth) ...
es to apply the glowing paint onto dials. The rate of pay, for painting 250 dials a day, was about a penny and a half per dial (). The brushes would lose shape after a few strokes, so the USRC supervisors encouraged their workers to point the brushes with their lips ("lip, dip, paint"), or use their tongues to keep them sharp. Because the true nature of the radium had been kept from them, the Radium Girls painted their nails, teeth, and faces for fun with the deadly paint produced at the factory.
Many of the workers became sick; over 50 died from exposure to radiation by 1927. Several are buried in Orange's
Rosedale Cemetery.
Radiation poisoning
Dentists were among the first to see numerous problems among dial painters. Dental pain, loose teeth, lesions and ulcers, and the failure of tooth extractions to heal were some of these conditions. Many of the women later began to develop
anemia
Anemia or anaemia (British English) is a blood disorder in which the blood has a reduced ability to carry oxygen due to a lower than normal number of red blood cells, or a reduction in the amount of hemoglobin. When anemia comes on slowly, th ...
,
bone fracture
A bone fracture (abbreviated FRX or Fx, Fx, or #) is a medical condition in which there is a partial or complete break in the continuity of any bone in the body. In more severe cases, the bone may be broken into several fragments, known as a '' ...
s, and
necrosis
Necrosis () is a form of cell injury which results in the premature death of cells in living tissue by autolysis. Necrosis is caused by factors external to the cell or tissue, such as infection, or trauma which result in the unregulated dige ...
of the jaw, a condition now known as
radium jaw
Radium jaw, or radium necrosis, is a historic occupational disease brought on by the ingestion and subsequent absorption of radium into the bones of radium dial painters. It also affected those consuming radium-laden patent medicines. The symptom ...
.
The women also experienced suppression of menstruation, and sterility.
It is thought that the
X-ray
An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...
machines used by the medical investigators may have contributed to some of the sickened workers' ill-health by subjecting them to additional radiation. It turned out at least one of the examinations was a ruse, part of a campaign of
disinformation
Disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive people. It is sometimes confused with misinformation, which is false information but is not deliberate.
The English word ''disinformation'' comes from the application of the L ...
started by the defense contractor.
[ U.S. Radium and other watch-dial companies rejected claims that the affected workers were suffering from exposure to radium. For some time, doctors, dentists, and researchers complied with requests from the companies not to release their data.
In 1923, the first dial painter died, and before her death, her jaw fell away from her skull.] By 1924, 50 women who had worked at the plant were ill, and a dozen had died. At the urging of the companies, worker deaths were attributed by medical professionals to other causes. Syphilis
Syphilis () is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium ''Treponema pallidum'' subspecies ''pallidum''. The signs and symptoms of syphilis vary depending in which of the four stages it presents (primary, secondary, latent, an ...
, a notorious sexually transmitted infection
Sexually transmitted infections (STIs), also referred to as sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and the older term venereal diseases, are infections that are Transmission (medicine), spread by Human sexual activity, sexual activity, especi ...
at the time, was often cited in attempts to smear the reputations of the women.
The inventor of radium dial paint, Rd. Sabin Arnold von Sochocky, died in November 1928, becoming the 16th known victim of poisoning by radium dial paint. He had gotten sick from radium in his hands, not the jaw, but the circumstances of his death helped the Radium Girls in court.
Radium Dial Company
The Radium Dial Company
The Radium Dial Company was one of a few now defunct United States companies, along with the United States Radium Corporation, involved in the painting of clocks, watches and other instrument dials using radioluminescent paint containing radium. ...
was established in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1922, in the town's former high school. Like the United States Radium Corporation, the purpose of the studio in Ottawa was to paint dials for clocks, their largest client being Westclox Corporation in Peru, Illinois. Dials painted in Ottawa appeared on Westclox's popular Big Ben, Baby Ben and travel clocks; and like United States Radium Corporation, Radium Dial hired young women to paint the dials, using the same "lip, dip, paint" approach as the women in New Jersey and by another unaffiliated plant in Waterbury, Connecticut, that supplied the Waterbury Clock Company
Timex Group USA, Inc. (formerly known as Timex Corporation) is an American global watch manufacturing company founded in 1854 as the Waterbury Clock Company in Waterbury, Connecticut. In 1944, the company became insolvent but was reformed into ...
.
Following the termination of President Joseph Kelly from the concern, Kelly established a competing firm in the town named Luminous Process Company, which also employed women in the same fashion, and in the conditions as the other firms. Employees at Radium Dial began showing signs of radium poisoning in 1926–1927 and were unaware of the hearings and trials in New Jersey. Furthermore, Radium Dial leadership authorized physicals and other tests designed to determine the toxicity of radium paint to its employees, but the company never gave those records to the employees or told them of the results. In a half-hearted attempt to end the use of the camel hair brushes, management introduced glass pens with a fine point; however, the workers found that the pens slowed their productivity (they were paid by the piece), and they reverted to using brushes. When word of the New Jersey women and their suits appeared in local newspapers, the women were told that the radium was safe and that employees in New Jersey were showing signs of viral infections. Assured by their employers that the radium was safe, they returned to work as usual.
Significance
Litigation
In Orange, New Jersey, the story of the abuse perpetrated against the workers is distinguished from most such cases by the fact that the ensuing litigation was covered widely by the media. Plant worker Grace Fryer decided to sue, but it took two years for her to find a lawyer willing to take on U.S. Radium. Even after the women found a lawyer, the litigation process moved slowly. At their first appearance in court in January 1928, two women were bedridden and none of them could raise their arms to take an oath. A total of five factory workers – Grace Fryer, Edna Hussman, Katherine Schaub, and sisters Quinta McDonald and Albina Larice – dubbed the Radium Girls, joined the suit. The litigation and media sensation surrounding the case established legal precedents and triggered the enactment of regulations governing labor safety standards, including a baseline of "provable suffering".
In Illinois, employees began asking for compensation for their medical and dental bills as early as 1927 but were refused by management. The demand for money by sick and dying former employees continued into the mid-1930s before a suit was brought before the Illinois Industrial Commission (IIC). In 1937 five women found an attorney by the name of Leonard Grossman, who would represent them in front of the commission, but by this time, Radium Dial had closed, moving to New York. The IIC did retain a $10,000 deposit left by Radium Dial when it disclosed to the IIC that they could not find any insurance to cover the cost of indemnifying the company against employee suits. In the spring of 1938, the IIC ruled in favor of the women. The attorney representing the interests of Radium Dial appealed hoping to get the verdict overturned, and again the commission judge, George B. Marvel, found for the women. Radium Dial appealed over and over, taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court and on October 23, 1939, the court decided not to hear the appeal and the lower ruling was upheld. In the end, this case had been won eight times before Radium Dial was finally forced to pay.
Historical impact
The Radium Girls' saga holds an important place in the history of both the field of health physics
Health physics, also referred to as the science of radiation protection, is the profession devoted to protecting people and their environment from potential radiation hazards, while making it possible to enjoy the beneficial uses of radiation. H ...
and the labor rights
Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influen ...
movement. The right of individual workers to sue for damages from corporations due to labor abuse was established as a result of the Radium Girls case. In the wake of the case, industrial safety standards were demonstrably enhanced for many decades.
The Radium Girls' case was settled in the autumn of 1928, before the trial was deliberated by the jury, and the settlement for each of the Radium Girls was $10,000 () and a $600 per year annuity () paid $12 a week () for all of their lives while they lived, and all medical and legal expenses incurred would also be paid by the company.
The lawsuit and resulting publicity was a factor in the establishment of occupational disease
An occupational disease is any chronic ailment that occurs as a result of work or occupational activity. It is an aspect of occupational safety and health. An occupational disease is typically identified when it is shown that it is more prevalen ...
labor law
Labour laws (also known as labor laws or employment laws) are those that mediate the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions, and the government. Collective labour law relates to the tripartite relationship between employee, ...
. Radium dial painters were instructed in proper safety precautions and provided with protective gear; in particular, they no longer shaped paint brushes by lip and avoided ingesting or breathing the paint. Radium paint was still used in dials as late as the 1970s.
Scientific impact
Robley D. Evans made the first measurements of exhaled radon
Radon is a chemical element with the symbol Rn and atomic number 86. It is a radioactive, colourless, odourless, tasteless noble gas. It occurs naturally in minute quantities as an intermediate step in the normal radioactive decay chains through ...
and radium excretion from a former dial painter in 1933. At MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
he gathered dependable body content measurements from 27 dial painters. This information was used in 1941 by the National Bureau of Standards
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical sci ...
to establish the tolerance level for radium of 0.1 μ Ci (3.7 k Bq).
The Center for Human Radiobiology was established at Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory operated by University of Chicago, UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facil ...
in 1968. The primary purpose of the center was providing medical examinations for living dial painters. The project also focused on the collection of information and, in some cases, tissue samples from the radium dial painters. When the project ended in 1993, detailed information of 2,403 cases had been collected. This led to a book on the effects of radium on humans. The book suggests that radium-228 exposure is more harmful to health than exposure to radium-226. Radium-228 is more able to cause cancer of the bone as the shorter half life of the radon-220 product compared to radon-222 causes the daughter nuclides of radium-228 to deliver a greater dose of alpha radiation to the bones. It also considers the induction of a range of different forms of cancer as a result of internal exposure to radium and its daughter nuclides. The book used data from radium dial painters, people who were exposed as a result of the use of radium-containing medical products, and other groups of people who had been exposed to radium.
In literature, music and film
*The story inspired the Italian songwriter Ottavia Brown to dedicate the song "Non solo le stelle brillano" (''Not Only the Stars Shine'') to them on the album ''Signora Nessun'' released in 2020.
*The story is told from the point of view of the women in New Jersey, and Illinois, in Kate Moore's non-fiction book ''The Radium Girls'' () released in the UK in 2016 and US in 2017.
*The story is told in Eleanor Swanson's poem "Radium Girls", collected in ''A Thousand Bonds: Marie Curie and the Discovery of Radium'' (2003, ).
*Poet Lavinia Greenlaw has written on the subject in ''The Innocence of Radium'' (Night Photograph, 1994).
*Historian Claudia Clark wrote an account of the case and its wider historical implications: ''Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910–1935'' (published 1997).
*Ross Mullner's book ''Deadly Glow: The Radium Dial Worker Tragedy'' describes many of the events (1999, ).
*The story is told by Jo Lawrence in her short animated film ''Glow'' (2007).
* Michael Martone's short story "It's Time" is told from the perspective of an unnamed Radium Girl.
*A fictionalized version of the story was featured in the Spike TV
Paramount Network is an American basic cable television channel owned by the MTV Entertainment Group unit of Paramount Media Networks. The network's headquarters are located at the Paramount Pictures studio lot in Los Angeles.
The channel was o ...
show '' 1000 Ways to Die'' (#196) and Science Channel
Science Channel (often simply branded as Science; abbreviated to SCI) is an American pay television channel owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The channel features programming focusing on science related to wilderness survival, engineering, manu ...
's '' Dark Matters: Twisted But True''.
*''Radium Halos: A Novel About the Radium Dial Painters'' a 2009 novel by Shelley Stout is historical fiction narrated by a sixty-five-year-old mental patient who worked at the factory when she was sixteen ().
* Author Robert R. Johnson features a story on the radium girls in his book ''Romancing the Atom''. ()
*''The Case of the Living Dead Women'', a Website, displays scans of 180 pages of newspaper clippings about a similar incident, the Ottawa, Illinois Radium Dial Company
The Radium Dial Company was one of a few now defunct United States companies, along with the United States Radium Corporation, involved in the painting of clocks, watches and other instrument dials using radioluminescent paint containing radium. ...
litigation.
* A fictionalized version of the story was featured in the 1937 short story "Letter to the Editor" by James H. Street, adapted into a 1937 film '' Nothing Sacred'' and a 1953 Broadway musical ''Hazel Flagg
''Hazel Flagg'' is a 1953 musical, book by Ben Hecht, based on a story by James H. Street. The lyrics are by Bob Hilliard, and music by Jule Styne. The musical is based on the 1937 screwball comedy film '' Nothing Sacred'', the primary screenwrit ...
''.
*The documentary ''Radium City'' depicts first hand accounts of some of the watch dial painters in Ottawa, IL.
*A version of the story for a young adult readership is told in the novel ''Glow'' by Megan E. Bryant. ()
*A play named '' These Shining Lives'' was written by Melanie Marnich
Melanie Marnich is an American television writer-producer and playwright. She co-created and serves as executive producer and co-showrunner for the upcoming Amazon series, '' The Expatriates.'' She has written for ''Big Love'' on HBO; Her episode ...
and Dramatists Play Service Inc. and is narrated by Catherine Wolfe Donohue, one of four protagonist workers who sued in Illinois
Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...
. ()
*''Luminous: The Story of a Radium Girl'' (2020) by Samantha Wilcoxson is a biographical fiction novel featuring Catherine Donohue ().
*A film was set to release on April 3, 2020, named '' Radium Girls'' starring Joey King
Joey Lynn King (born July 30, 1999) is an American actress. She first gained recognition for portraying Ramona Quimby in the comedy film ''Ramona and Beezus'' (2010) and has since gained wider recognition for her lead role in ''The Kissing Boot ...
, however, it was delayed due to COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...
*A 2000 play ''Radium Girls'' by D. W. Gregory is based on the incident.
*The Scottish Band Idlewild refers to the fate of the Radium Girls in the song "Radium Girl" on the album '' Everything Ever Written''.
See also
* Breaker boy
A breaker boy was a coal-mining worker in the United StatesHindman, Hugh D. ''Child Labor: An American History.'' Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2002. and United Kingdom whose job was to separate impurities from coal by hand in a coal breaker. Altho ...
* Katherine Rotan Drinker Katherine Rotan Drinker (1889 – March 15, 1956) was an American physician.
Early life
Katherine Rotan was born in 1889 to mother Kate Sturm McCall Rotan and father Edward Rotan of Waco, Texas. She was one of nine children.
Education
Drinker ...
and Cecil Kent Drinker, who researched the Radium Girls
* Hiroshima maidens
The Hiroshima Maidens ( ja, 原爆乙女(''Genbaku otome''); "atomic bomb maidens") are a group of 25 Japanese women who were school age girls when they were seriously disfigured as a result of the thermal flash of the fission bomb dropped on ...
* Labor law
Labour laws (also known as labor laws or employment laws) are those that mediate the relationship between workers, employing entities, trade unions, and the government. Collective labour law relates to the tripartite relationship between employee, ...
* Labor history
Labor history or labour history is a sub-discipline of social history which specialises on the history of the working classes and the labor movement. Labor historians may concern themselves with issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and other fac ...
* Labor rights
Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influen ...
* Occupational disease
An occupational disease is any chronic ailment that occurs as a result of work or occupational activity. It is an aspect of occupational safety and health. An occupational disease is typically identified when it is shown that it is more prevalen ...
* Phossy jaw
Phossy jaw, formally known as phosphorus necrosis of the jaw, was an occupational disease affecting those who worked with white phosphorus (also known as ''yellow phosphorus'') without proper safeguards. It was most commonly seen in workers in the ...
* Nuclear labor issues
Nuclear labor issues exist within the international nuclear power industry and the nuclear weapons production sector worldwide, impacting upon the lives and health of laborers, itinerant workers and their families.
A subculture of frequently ...
* Radioactive contamination
Radioactive contamination, also called radiological pollution, is the deposition of, or presence of radioactive substances on surfaces or within solids, liquids, or gases (including the human body), where their presence is unintended or undesirab ...
* Radium silk
* Tritium radioluminescence
Tritium radioluminescence is the use of gaseous tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, to create visible light. Tritium emits electrons through beta decay and, when they interact with a phosphor material, light is emitted through the proces ...
References
{{reflist
External links
Rutgers University
– 'University Libraries Special Collections: U.S. Radium Corporation, East Orange, NJ', Records, Catalog 1917–1940
Undark and the Radium Girls
Alan Bellows, December 28, 2006, ''Damn Interesting''
Eleanor Swanson. copy o
/small>
''Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'', June 4, 1928. "That the world may see streaks of light through the long hours of darkness, Orange, N.J., women hired themselves to the U.S. Radium Corporation."
Radium Women
''Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'', August 11, 1930. "Five young New Jersey women who were poisoned while painting luminous watch dials for U.S. Radium Corp., two years ago heard doctors pronounce their doom: one year to live."
Mae Keane, The Last 'Radium Girl,' Dies At 107
NPR
National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...
Radium City (1987), documentary
Radium Girls (2018), feature film
Advocacy groups in the United States
History of labor relations in the United States
History of women in Illinois
History of women in New Jersey
Nuclear safety and security
Orange, New Jersey
Radium
History of women in Connecticut
Ottawa, Illinois