The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting radium dials – watch dials and hands with self-luminous paint.

2024年6月7日 · Radium Girls, factory workers in radium dial factories, fell ill with anemia, cancer and necrosis of the jaw due to radium poisoning from glow-in-the-dark paint. Radium, initially promoted as a cure-all, was used in consumer products and later in radium paint for instruments during World War I.

In 1925 a pathologist named Harrison Martland developed a test that proved conclusively that radium had poisoned the watch painters by destroying their bodies from the inside. The radium industry tried to discredit Martland’s findings, but the Radium Girls themselves fought back.

Radium has been shown to cause adverse health effects such as anemia, cataracts, fractured teeth, cancer and death. The relationship between the amount of radium that you are exposed to and the amount of time necessary to produce these effects is not known.

Exposure to Radium over a period of many years may result in an increased risk of some types of cancer, particularly lung and bone cancer. Higher doses of Radium have been shown to cause effects on the blood (anemia), eyes (cataracts), teeth (broken teeth), and …

2023年4月6日 · In 1917, scores of patriotic young women, later known as “radium girls,” counted themselves lucky to have landed war work at a large warehouse complex in Orange, New Jersey. The pay was fantastic – roughly three times the average …

2019年8月8日 · Often, the girls’ first intimation that they had radium poisoning was catching sight of themselves in a mirror at night. Their bones literally glowed in the dark. Then, the girls started dying.