Talk:Radium Girls

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"rv: perhaps a well meaning edit, but the spice of relevant and hearty context sure beats politically correct historical revisionism any day"

My intent was hardly "historical revisionism"! The reason I changed the statment "In a chilling prelude to the atomic bomb radiation unleashed by the United States during World War II, the U.S. Radium Corporation hired some 70 women to perform..." is because it SOUNDS poorly worded. "the atomic bomb radiation released during WWII" is miniscule compared to the amount of fallout released by the thousands of nuclear weapons detonated by both superpowers in the decades afterward. This is a time more aptly encompassed by the term "atomic age". Furthermore the sentance seems to draw an implicit connection between the radium corporation's negligence and the US Gov.'s nuclear ambitions and that's just silly.--Deglr6328 17:28, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks for adding clarity to your initially terse explanation. The rhetorical jungle of Wikiedit summaries is rife with accusations of ad hominem attacks, an issue that could, hopefully, be tabled without need for further attention. Attending to content, the initial bombing was 'a shot heard round the world', climaxing the rush to harness radiation a bit more effectively than merely lighting up watch faces. While nuclear testing and atomic energy waste have drenched the likes of Chernobl in radioactivity, such manifestations of the atomic age pale somewhat when comparison is made to the attention given to the Hiroshima bombing. So, yes, the wording may need revision, or perhaps deletion as you suggest, but the inherent dangers of harnessing radiation were not handled well by US Radium then, just as case remains with nuclear waste and atomic bomb tests today. As a historical matter concerning the risk management of radioactive materials, simply referencing the atomic age does not seem to do justice, within the article, to the significance of labor abuse by military contractors. Ombudsman 20:18, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

ok I can agree with most of that, I just don't like the comcept of comparing the Ra girl "incident" in which negligence (and some ignorance?) was at fault for the harm induced in the workers at the factory to a act which purposely resulted in the obliteration of tens of thousands of lives during a war.... What about what I have added now: "In what may be seen as a chilling prelude to the use of nuclear weaponry and the atomic age as a whole, in which lack of concern for exposure to radiological hazards was at times endemic; the Radium Girl episode holds an important place in the history of both the progression of the field of health physics and of the labor rights movement."?--Deglr6328 06:28, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)