Moore also explores the story of the women who worked at the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, IL. Doctors were mystified at their condition, and their employers refused to take responsibility, even discrediting the characters of the girls involved. Moore offers a heartbreaking account of the pain and suffering many of the “radium girls” experienced. This element was still relatively new, and scientists were unaware of how dangerous it was. They painted watch dials with glow-in-the-dark paint made with radium. In 1917, the same year the United States entered World War I, dozens of young women, many of them teenagers from working-class families, took up positions at the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation in Newark, NJ. After all, they undoubtedly saved the lives of others with their discoveries.Gr 7 Up–This dense, meticulously researched book covers the courageous determination of young women who unknowingly poisoned themselves while doing their job. The Radium Girls deserve their stories to be told as descriptively and accurately as possible. The movie prompted me to research the real Radium Girls, leaving me with one critique: I wish directors would have focused solely on the women’s stories instead of trying to encompass the era’s themes at the time. Nonetheless, they fought through radium poisoning long enough to establish their names in history forever as courageous, inspiring women. The movie revealed shocking facts about the Radium Girls including, “If you place a Geiger Counter over the grave of a Radium Girl, it will click for a thousand years.” This quote put into perspective just how radiated these women’s bodies were. Yes, they finally informed the public about radium poisoning and how deadly it is but not before dozens of women who worked at the clock factory died. After a brutal case, the Radium Girls prevailed, but not without great cost. The clock factory played a major part in keeping vital health information about radium from being published.Īs secrets were exposed, the women banded together to fight in a court case against their employer. Shocking correlations between sickness, death and radium were made as the sisters recruited help from coworkers. The two girls knew the doctor was not telling the truth and pushed for further information from a lawyer who covered cases of a similar nature. With her body exhumed, a conclusion of radium poisoning was finally reached. Josephine and Bessie recalled that their older sister, Mary, recieved the same diagnosis before she died from her illness. His diagnosis was controversial and entirely inaccurate. When Josephine fell sick, she went to a doctor. Workers began to fall severely ill and losing teeth as their bodies deteriorated.Ĭonfusion sat heavily in the minds of the dial painters as more and more coworkers became ill. Seeing as radium was a fairly new discovery, not all the dangers were known about the eye-catching element. The factory workers were advised to lick their brushes for precise painting, noting that radium is healthy and safe for human consumption. The two main characters, Josephine and Bessie, are sisters who work at a clock factory where they hand paint numbers onto watch dials with radium-based paint to make them glow in the dark. and was incorporated into an array of products. At the time, the 1889 discovery of radium continued to captivate the U.S. Based on a true story and set in 1920’s New Jersey, “Radium Girls” is a 2018 film starring Joey King and Abby Quinn as dial painters.
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