Radium Girls
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The Radium Girls was the name given to women subjected to radiation exposure at the United States Radium Corporation factory, in Orange, New Jersey, beginning during World War I, five of whom gained notoriety for their efforts in challenging their employer in court. The five women, and many of their co-workers and radium paint plant workers from across North America, died from radiation exposure during the course of the litigation.
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[edit] U.S. Radium Corporation
From 1917 to 1926, U.S. Radium Corporation was engaged in the extraction and purification of radium from carnotite ore to produce luminous paints, which were produced under the brand name 'Undark'. As a defense contractor, U.S. Radium was a major supplier of radioluminescent watches to the military. Their plant in New Jersey employed over a hundred workers, mainly women, to paint radium-lit watch faces and instruments.
[edit] Radiation exposure
The Radium Girls saga holds an important place in the history of both the progression of the field of health physics and of the labor rights movement. The U.S. Radium Corporation hired some 70 women to perform various tasks including the handling of radium, while the owners and their scientists — familiar with the effects of radium — carefully avoided any exposure to themselves; chemists at the plant used lead screens, masks and tongs. An estimated 4,000 workers were hired by corporations in the US and Canada to paint watch faces with radium.
For fun, the Radium Girls painted their nails, teeth and faces with the deadly paint produced at the factory, sometimes to surprise their boyfriends when the lights went out. They mixed glue, water and radium powder, and then used camel hair brushes to apply the glowing paint onto dial numbers. The going rate, 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 U.S. Radium supervisors encouraged their workers to point the brushes with their lips, or use their tongues to keep them sharp.
[edit] Radiation sickness
Many of the women later began to suffer from anemia, bone fractures and necrosis of the jaw. Primitive x-ray cameras bombarded some of the sickened workers with additional radiation when they sought medical attention for the many ailments that ensued. It turned out at least one of the examinations was a ruse, part of a campaign of disinformation started by the defence contractor. U.S. Radium, like other watch-dial companies, rejected claims that the afflicted 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. At the urging of the companies, worker deaths were attributed by medical professionals to other causes; syphilis was often cited in attempts to smear the reputations of the women.
[edit] Significance
[edit] Litigation
The story of the labor abuse perpetrated against the workers is distinguished from most such cases by the fact the ensuing litigation was covered widely by the media. Plant worker Grace Fryer decided to sue, but it took two years for her to simply find a lawyer willing to risk taking on U.S. Radium. A total of five factory workers, dubbed the Radium Girls, joined the suit. The litigation and media sensation surrounding the case was notable from a historical perspective, for it established legal precedents and triggered the enactment of regulations governing labor safety standards, including a baseline of 'provable suffering'.
[edit] Historical impact
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 (though the combined settlement for the Radium Girls was only $10,000). In the wake of the case, industrial safety standards were demonstrably enhanced for many decades. The case led to passage of a congressional bill, in 1949, which made all occupational diseases compensable, and extended the time during which workers could discover illnesses and make a claim.
[edit] Scientific impact
Robley D. Evans made the first measurements of exhaled radon and radium excretion from a former dial painter in 1933. At MIT he gathered dependable body content measurements from 27 dial painters. This information was used in 1941 by the National Bureau of Standards to establish the tolerance level for radium of 0.1 μCi.
The Center for Human Radiobiology was established at Argonne National Laboratory in 1968. The primary purpose of the Center was providing medical examinations for living dial painters. The project also focused on 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. No symptoms were observed in those dial painter cases with less than 1,000 times the natural 226Ra levels found in unexposed individuals, suggesting a threshold for radium-induced malignacies.
[edit] Literature
The story of the workers was immortalized in the poem "Radium Girls" by Eleanor Swanson, and is included in her collection, A Thousand Bonds: Marie Curie and the Discovery of Radium (2003).
Writer D.W. Gregory also reincarnated the story of Grace Fryer through her award-winning play Radium Girls, which premiered in 2000 at the Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey in Madison, New Jersey.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- RUNet.edu - 'The Radium Girls' (originally published as chapter eight of Mass Media and Environmental Conflict), Bill Kovarik (Revised 2002)
- UMDNJ.edu - 'University Libraries Special Collections: U.S. Radium Corporation, East Orange, NJ', Records, Catalog 1917-1940 (Revised, June, 2003)
- NTIS - 'Radium in Humans, A Review of U.S. Studies, R.E. Rowland, Argonne National Laboratory, 1994, NTIS document number DE95006146
- United States Radium Company History and Original Stock Certificate - 1926
