The Radium Girls are female factory workers contracted by radiation poisoning from painting watches with self-luminous paint. Painting is done by women in three different locations in the United States, and this term now applies to women working in the facility. The first, the United States Radium factory in Orange, New Jersey, began around 1917, in Ottawa, Illinois, beginning in the early 1920s, and a third facility in Waterbury, Connecticut.
Women in every facility have been told that the paint is harmless, and then swallows the amount of lethal radium after being instructed to "direct" their brushes to their lips to give them a fine point; some also paint their nails, face and teeth with luminous substances. Women are instructed to direct their brushes by using a washcloth, or rinse water, causing them to waste too much time and wasting too much material made of radium powder, gum arabic and water.
Five of the women in New Jersey challenged their employers in cases over the rights of individual workers who contracted occupational diseases to sue their employers under New Jersey's job injury law, which at the time had a two-year restriction law, but resolved the courts. Five women in Illinois who are employees of the Radium Dial Company (not affiliated with Radium Corporation of the United States) sued their employer under Illinois law, winning damages in 1938.
Video Radium Girls
United States Radium Corporation
From 1917 to 1926, the US Radium Corporation, originally called Radium Luminous Materials Corporation, was involved in the extraction and purification of radium from the carnotite ore to produce luminous paint, which is marketed under the trademark "Undark". The ore is mined from Paradox Valley in Colorado and the other "Undark mines" in Utah. As a defense contractor, Radium USA is a major supplier of radioluminescent watches to the military. Their factory in Orange, New Jersey, employs over a hundred workers, especially women, to paint faces and instruments with radium-lit hours, misleading them that it's safe.
Radiation exposure
Radium Corporation USA employs approximately 70 women to perform a variety of tasks including radium handling, while owners and scientists familiar with the effects of radium cautiously avoid the exposure itself; chemists at the factory use the main screen, masks and tongs. Radium USA has distributed lectures to the medical community depicting "harmful effects" of radium. Apart from this knowledge, a number of similar deaths have occurred in 1925, including the company's chief chemist, Dr. Edwin E. Leman and several female workers. A similar condition of their deaths prompted an investigation to be conducted by Dr. Harrison Martland, the County Physician of Newark.
An estimated 4,000 workers are employed by companies in the US and Canada to paint a watch face with radium. In the USRC, each painter mixes his own paint in a small melting pot, and then uses a camel hair brush to apply a luminous paint to the dial. The current payment rate, to paint 250 calls a day, is about one cent and half per call (equivalent to $ 0.287 by 2017). The brush will lose its shape after a few strokes, so US Radium watchdogs encourage their workers to direct the brush with their lips ("lips, dye, paint"), or use their tongue to keep them sharp. Because the true nature of radium has been saved from them, Radium Girls paint their nails, teeth, and faces to have fun with the deadly paint produced in the factory. Many workers become ill. It is not known how many died of radiation exposure.
Radiation disease
Many women then begin to suffer from anemia, bone fractures and jaw necrosis, a condition now known as radium jaw. It is thought that X-ray machines used by medical investigators may have contributed to some ill health of workers who fell ill by subjecting them to additional radiation. It turns out that at least one of those exams is a ruse, part of a disinformation campaign started by a defense contractor. Radium US and other watch companies rejected claims that workers suffering from radium exposure. For some time, doctors, dentists, and researchers are meeting the demands of companies not to release their data. At the company's insistence, the deaths of workers are caused by medical professionals for other causes; syphilis, a sexually transmitted infection known at the time, is often cited in an attempt to apply the reputation of women.
The inventor of radium dial pain, Dr. Sabin A. Von Sochocky, died in November 1928, becoming a 16th victim known to be poisoned by radium dial paints. She gets sick from radium in her hands instead of jaws, and immediately offers to help Radium Girls in court.
Maps Radium Girls
Company Radium Dial
The Radium Dial Company was founded in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1922, in a former municipal high school. Like the United States Radium Corporation, the goal of the studio in Ottawa is to paint fast hours, their biggest client is Westclox Corporation in Peru, Illinois. The painted Dial in Ottawa appeared in Big Ben, Little Ben, and the popular travel hours at Westclox; and like the United States Radium Corporation, Radium Dial employs young women to paint the dial, using the same "lips, dye, paint" approach as the women in New Jersey and by other unaffiliated factories in Waterbury, Connecticut, supplying the Waterbury Watch Company..
After the termination of President Joseph Kelly's concerns, Kelly founded a competing company in a town called Luminous Process Company, which also employs women in the same way, and in conditions like other companies. Employees at Radium Dial started showing signs of radium poisoning in 1926-1927, and did not know the trial and trial in New Jersey. Furthermore, the Radium Dial leadership allows physical and other tests designed to determine employee toxicity, but the company never alters the records to employees or informs them of the results. In a halfhearted effort to end the use of camel hairbrushes, management introduced a pointed glass pen, but workers found that pens slowed their productivity (they were paid for by pieces), and they again used brushes. When the words of the New Jersey women and their clothes appeared in the local newspaper, the women were told that the radium was safe, and that employees in New Jersey showed signs of viral infection. Insured by their employer that radium is safe, they return to work as usual.
Significance
Litigation
In New Jersey, the stories of harassment perpetrated against workers are distinguished from most of the cases by the fact that subsequent litigation is widely covered by the media. Factory worker Grace Fryer decided to sue, but it took her two years to find a lawyer willing to take on US Radium. Even after the women found a lawyer, a slow-moving trial lasted for months. On their first appearance in court in January 1928, two women were lying in bed and no one could raise their hands to take an oath. A total of five factory workers - Grace Fryer, Edna Hussman, Katherine Schaub, and relatives Quinta McDonald and Albina Larice - nicknamed Radium Girls, joined the lawsuit. The litigation and media sensations surrounding the case set up legal precedents and triggered the enactment of regulations governing safety standards, including the baseline of "provable suffering".
In Illinois, employees began to seek compensation for their medical and dental bills as early as 1927, but were rejected by management. Demand for money by former sick and dying employees continued into the mid-1930s before a lawsuit before the Illinois Industrial Commission (IIC) was brought. In 1937, five women found a lawyer who would represent them in front of the commission, but by this time, Radium Dial had been closed, leaving no forwarding address. IIC did keep a $ 10,000 deposit left by Radium Dial when it was disclosed to IIC that they could not find insurance to cover the cost of compensating the company for employee wear. In the spring of 1938, the IIC decided to support the women. Lawyers representing Radium Dial's interests apply to get the verdict undone, and again the commission's judge finds it for women.
Historical Impact
The Radium Girls' saga holds an important place in the history of both the field of health physics and the labor rights movement. The right of each worker to claim compensation from the company due to labor misuse was established as a result of the Radium Girls case. Immediately after this case, industry safety standards have been shown to increase over the past few decades.
The case was settled in the fall of 1928, before the trial was discussed by the jury, and the settlement for each Radium Girls was $ 10,000 (equivalent to $ 143,000 in 2017) and $ 600 annuity per annum plus $ 12 per week for all life (equivalent to $ 8,600 in 2017) when they live, and all medical and legal costs incurred will also be paid by the company.
The resulting lawsuit and publication are factors in the formation of labor law of work disease. The radium dial painter is instructed in proper precautions and equipped with a protective device; in particular, they no longer form paint brushes on the lips and avoid swallowing or inhaling paint. Cat Radium was still used in dial in the late 1960s.
Scientific impact
Robley D. Evans made the first measurements of radon exhalation and radium excretion from a former painter in 1933. At MIT he collected reliable body content measurements from 27 call painters. This information was used in 1941 by the National Bureau of Standards to establish a tolerance level for radium 0.1? Ci (3.7 kBq).
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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