By: Kate Moore
Scott County Library hardcover 399 pages plus many extras (author's note, bibliography, etc.)
Published: 2017
Genre: Non-fiction (363.17 Dewey)
I may need to reduce my post-its. This has taken me too long to read and I really need to get it back to the library! It was fascinating, but I didn't "like" it. These young women's lives were stolen by corporate greed. The author really captured the essence of these women who were so excited to have a well-paying job. The sheen of radium that clung to their clothing, hair, and skin seemed to be an added bonus. But that radium tortured, then killed them. And the company denied culpability.
Page 6: The element was dubbed "liquid sunshine," and it lit up not just the hospitals and drawing rooms of America, but its theaters, music halls, grocery stores, and bookshelves.
As someone who loves shiny things and sunshine, I would have been enamored of this element in the late teens and early 1920s. That it was considered "healthy" horrifies my 2026 brain.
Page 9: Some earned more than three times the average factory-floor worker; some even earned more than their fathers. They were ranked in the top 5 percent of female wage-earners and on average took home $20 ($370) a week, though the fastest painters could easily earn more . . . "
I'm guessing the $370 is reflecting 2017 dollars . . . and oh, how the world has changed in the past decade. The girls were hired to paint the radium-filled luminescence onto watch faces, dials, etc. The method for getting it precise included putting the tip of the paintbrush into their mouths to "point" it. These young women (and some of them teenagers!) were poisoning themselves for their lucrative jobs.
Page 31: The residue from radium extraction looked like seaside sand, and the company had offloaded this industrial waste by selling it to schools and playgrounds to use in their children's sandboxes; kids' shoes were reported to have turned white because of it, while one little boy complained to his mother of a burning sensation in his hands.
Ugh. This raises questions about how much the company knew or suspected in 1920. Willful ignorance or actual ignorance?
Page 50: In fact, the bibliography contained articles as far back as 1906 on the damage radium could cause.
This bibliography is from radium studies that the company had published! Titled "Radium Dangers - Injurious Effects." So . . . all their later claims of innocence are hard to believe. And most of what USRC (United States Radium Corporation) published were glowingly positive reviews of the benefits of radium. Those skunks!
Page 51: But if you looked a little closer at all those positive publications, there was a common denominator: the researchers, on the whole, worked for radium firms.
Well, yes. If you hire the "researchers," there may be some bias . . . (heavy sarcasm).
Page 77: His reasoning may have been political, for the Department of Labor was pro-business.
When the government cares more about businesses and money than about citizens, what are we to do?
Page 80: Grace - as had so many of her former colleagues - now became trapped in a vicious circle, with each operation incurring yet another bill. Before too long, she had to swallow her pride and ask her parents for money; but the rising medical costs desecrated both her savings and her family's bank account.
Grace Fryer was one of many, many young women who had teeth falling out, disintegrating jawbones, tumors ("sarcomas"), and various medical problems. Many of these dial painters were dead before they turned thirty. I probably marked many more spots like this, but I need to get this entry done and the book returned. People should not become destitute because they need medical care, especially if their job caused it!
Page 99: In Orange, the medical-exam results had been secretly shared with the company behind the women's backs; in Ottawa, they went straight to the corporation and cut out the middle woman entirely.
I hated this part! Not believing the women or their medical reports, the company made the women have medical exams AT work BY the company's doctors, and they were NOT given the results! HIPAA laws didn't exist until 1996.
Page 108: Radium was what one might call a boneseeker, just like calcium; and the human body is programmed to deliver calcium straight to the bones to make them stronger . . . Essentially, radium had masked itself as calcium . . .
The fact that many of the women had toothaches, a lack of healing after a tooth was pulled, and pieces of jawbone coming into their mouths just leaves me sick.
Page 125: On June 7, 1925, the first male employee of the United States Radium Corporation died.
Of course, it takes the death of a young man to get the company's attention! Dr. Leman had scoffed at concerns expressed over the black lesions on his hands. He was thirty-six and didn't wear gloves at work. He had been the chief chemist.
Page 134: Sarah's own life may have been cut short, but the radium inside her had a half-life of 1,600 years. It would be shooting out its rays from Sarah's bones for centuries, long after she was gone.
That's incredible. Later in the book, we learn that many family members of dead dial painters gave permission for their bodies to be exhumed. The glowing remains were most definitely radioactive!
Page 221: Predictably, USRC wheeled out Dr. Flinn, who pronounced that his tests showed "there is no radium" in the women; he was convinced, he said, that their health problems were caused by nerves. This was a common response to women's occupational illnesses, which were often first attributed to female hysteria.
There are times I'm really glad to have been born when I was . . . Dr. Flinn was not a medical doctor, by the way. The company hired a guy with a PhD in philosophy (or some similar field) to conduct examinations of the women who were suing the company!
Page 239: It was part of their settlement that they would agree to medical procedures. And so they were forced to strip as directed and went through the tests with the company men watching all they did closely.
Big nope. Angry nope. This was wrong on so many levels!
Page 272: It seemed wealthy consumers were much more worthy of protection than working-class girls; after all, dial painting was still going on, even in 1933.
This was after the AMA finally removed radium from a list of "New and Nonofficial Remedies." Something I dislike about humanity is how we revere financial wealth.
Page 296: After all, Radium Dial had long been a valued employer. With the country in the middle of its worst-ever economic depression - what some were now calling the Great Depression - communities were even more protective of the firms that could give them work and wages. The women found they were disbelieved, ignored and even shunned when they spoke out about their ailments and the cause.
I can't imagine the heartbreak of extreme physical ailments, miscarriages, etc. AND being treated like the bad guy as a young woman. One thing this author does well is making these women real to the reader. I went back to the photographs in the middle several times to see the faces of these women.
Page 329: The hard tumor on her hipbone, which had so been concerning Catherine over the past few months, was now "about the size of a grapefruit."
This thirty-five year old was down to 71 pounds, couldn't hold her children, and had a white blood cell count of a few hundred (8,000 is closer to normal). I read a few paragraphs of this page to Louie and he was horrified, too. "Catherine kept having to pick out pieces of her jawbone from her mouth." What part of female hysteria does this fit?
Page 336: The girls had been shunned, told they were liars and cheats and frauds; they had seen the company literally get away with murder. The truth was what they were fighting for.
Since the company was closed (and then reopened as a different company), there was not much in the way of money for the women's medical expenses. Over and over again, the company claimed it wasn't their fault that these workers were ill.
Page 368 has a letter that Catherine wrote which was widely publicized and resulted in thousands of people across the country praying for her. She lived far longer than was expected.
In the epilogue, we learn that WWII dramatically increased the radium dial-painting industry.
Page 377: . . . the United States used more than 190 grams of radium for luminous dials during the Second World War; in contrast, fewer than 30 grams were used worldwide in the earlier conflict.
I was shocked when I read that. Not the increase from WWI to WWII . . . the fact that it was such a tiny amount that cause so much destruction! The amount used - 190 grams - is less than half a pound!
Page 381: . . . the death of a dial-painter's sister: she had "reportedly died from radiation exposure, but had never worked at the [USRC] plant. The source of contamination appears to have been her sister, the dial painter, with whom she shared a bed."
Dude. That's insane. The radium killed the sister of a dial painter from being in close proximity!
Page 382: In 1963, perhaps at least partly in response to the research on the dial-painters, President Kennedy signed the international Limited Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited atomic tests above ground, underwater, and in outer space. Strontium-90, it had been determined, was too dangerous for humanity after all.
Page 385 tells about a radioactive waste landfill that had homes built on top of it! "More than 200 acres of land were affected in Orange, some to a depth of more than fifteen feet." The author also shares that the former site of Radium Dial in Ottawa, Illinois, became a meat-locker company. Employees died of cancer and "a family who purchased meat there found that 'every brother got colon cancer within six months of each other.'" On and on it goes! This is why we need government regulation of industry! Companies care about profits, not the environment or destruction of ordinary people's lives.
Page 391: The dial-painters' case ultimately led to the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which now works nationally in the United States to ensure safe working conditions.
OSHA is one good thing that resulted from all this, but I'm still horrified at the losses in these young women's lives.
Page 392: That was the tragedy. Radium had been known to be harmful since 1901. Every death since was unnecessary.
Page 398: But there were no warning signs in the workrooms. The women had been told that, as long as they didn't lip-point, they would be perfectly safe.
These women worked in a little town called Ottawa, Illinois. These women worked for Joseph Kelly's firm, Luminous Processes.
The year was 1978.
What?! Forty years after the big lawsuit, appeals, and verdict . . . the company (in a new guise) just kept up their game? So very, very sad.
