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, zinc sulfide (a phosphor), gum arabic, and water.įive of the women in New Jersey challenged their employer in a case over the right of individual workers who contract occupational diseases 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. The incidents occurred at three factories in United States: one in Orange, New Jersey, beginning around 1917 one in Ottawa, Illinois, beginning in the early 1920s and one in Waterbury, Connecticut, also in the 1920s.Īfter being told that the paint was harmless, the women in each facility ingested deadly amounts of radium after being instructed to "point" their brushes on their lips in order to give them a fine tip some also painted their fingernails, faces, and teeth with the glowing substance. provides an interesting social and human perspective on a classic health physics case.The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting radium dials – watch dials and hands with self-luminous paint. Her story also makes clear many of the limitations of the middle-class reform movement and of Progressive Era reformers in general.”- Against the Current ![]() Clark does an excellent job of showing the weaknesses of the company and state medical investigators, and the economic and political ties which kept them from conscientiously defending worker or public health. “Provides an understanding of the situation of one sector of working class women, and the strengths and weaknesses of one of the major middle-class women’s social reform organizations of the Progressive Era in the period of World War I. Highly recommended to all those interested in women’s history, labour history and the social history of medicine within and without the United States.”- Labour History Review demonstrates an impressive mastery of many disparate sub-disciplines, and weaves dominant debates of these fields into a tapestry of narrative that is cogent, compelling and compassionate. “An intelligent book that is both meticulously researched and highly readable. By so heedfully unearthing workers’ perspectives and experiences and by broaching extra-workplace questions about consumption, Clark helps transport the history of ‘occupational health’ beyond the framework first forged by George Rosen and Henry Sigerist, based on 1920s and 1930s industrial hygiene.”- Bulletin of the History of Medicine Contributes to the cultural history of the atomic age.”- Labor Studies Journal “A rich education in how 'knowledge about industrial diseases is a contested site of power'. It should be of interest to those interested in social history, women's history, and labor history and the development of public health in the United States."- Journal of American History Radium Girls is a brilliant case study of the radium dial industry. Clark provides a sophisticated and complex analysis of the interaction of labor, reformers, industrial physicians, academics, and industry that illuminates the specifics of this case as well as the development of industrial hygiene in general. "An extraordinarily rich and rewarding book. ![]() Finally, in appraising the dialpainters' campaign to secure compensation and prevention of further incidents-efforts launched with the help of the reform-minded, middle-class women of the Consumers' League-Clark is able to evaluate the achievements and shortcomings of the industrial health movement as a whole. She enriches the story by exploring contemporary disputes over workplace control, government intervention, and industry-backed medical research. Clark's account emphasizes the social and political factors that influenced the responses of the workers, managers, government officials, medical specialists, and legal authorities involved in the case. Their fight to have their symptoms recognized as an industrial disease represents an important chapter in the history of modern health and labor policy. ![]() But after repeated exposure to the radium-laced paint, they began to develop mysterious, often fatal illnesses that they traced to conditions in the workplace. Claudia Clark's book tells the compelling story of these women, who at first had no idea that the tedious task of dialpainting was any different from the other factory jobs available to them. In the early twentieth century, a group of women workers hired to apply luminous paint to watch faces and instrument dials found themselves among the first victims of radium poisoning.
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