Moore offers such vivid portraits of suffering that certain passages can be difficult to read, but this is an important story well told. A handful of physicians, public health investigators, and lawyers obtained some monetary awards for the victims, but the money was far from sufficient for adequate justice. Moore clearly separates the heroines from the villains throughout this deeply researched book, and she never masks her outrage. Later, when the toxicity had been documented, the employers blamed the women workers for careless use even though the women were observing workplace protocols. At first, the employers claimed that the radium was benign. The employers, as well as the scientists and physicians attending to the women, denied liability for the suffering and deaths. Many of the employees died while in their 20s and 30s after years of agonizing illnesses. Each one of them became sick from their piecework painting numerals on clock faces using a radium-infused radioactive substance that allowed the products to glow in the dark. Deciding to focus on the employers, the United States Radium Corporation in New Jersey and the Radium Dial Company in Illinois, Moore alternates chapters focusing on more than 15 women employed in Newark and a dozen women in Ottawa. She found two narrowly focused, quasi-academic books about the saga but nothing for general audiences. Eager to learn more, Moore traveled to the United States to research the deaths. Radium-based paint was banned in the 1960s.British author Moore ( Felix the Railway Cat, 2017) takes a slice of ugly American history from nearly a century ago, telling a compelling narrative that could be ripped from recent headlines.Ī few years ago, while living in London, the author went online to search for “great plays for women,” and she found These Shining Lives, a play by Melanie Marnich about the radium poisonings and subsequent workplace-related deaths of factory employees, primarily in Ottawa, Illinois, and Newark, New Jersey, in the 1920s and 1930s. Following an eventual lawsuit by former dial painters, the industry made further changes to improve worker safety. Upon receipt of the original research report, New Jersey’s labor commissioner ruled that all of Drinker’s safety recommendations be implemented, a move that led to the closure of the factory. Confronted with the evidence that Roeder had acted in bad faith, the Drinkers ignored the continued threat of a lawsuit and published the report. “ has a copy of your report and it shows that ‘every girl is in perfect condition.’ Do you suppose Roeder could do such a thing as to issue a forged report in your name?” she wrote in a 1925 letter to Katherine Drinker. Radium had submitted Cecil Drinker’s report to the New Jersey Department of Labor-with the findings altered to present the company in a more positive light. Through a contact in the National Consumers League, she learned that U.S. While Drinker reluctantly agreed not to publish the report, his HSPH colleague Alice Hamilton refused to back down. When he learned of Drinker’s plans to publish the HSPH team’s report, Roeder threatened to sue. He insisted that a contagious infection contracted outside the factory must be to blame and referred to an internal report that refuted Cecil Drinker’s findings-a report he refused to show Drinker. He issued a report to the company emphatically recommending safety precautions. Cecil Drinker observed that every inch of the painters glowed, “even the corsets.”ĭrinker was convinced that exposure to continuous doses of radium was causing the women’s health problems, which included excruciatingly painful necrosis of the jaw. Supervisors assured the all-female workforce-some as young as 15-that the paint was safe, and perhaps even beautifying. At a time when many believed radium had healing properties and it was served up in tonics and spa treatments, the women thought nothing of painting their hair, nails, and teeth as a party trick. Dial painters were encouraged to lick their paintbrushes to keep the points sharp, each time ingesting small amounts of the radium-based paint. The factory was saturated with radium-contaminated dust-and no steps had been taken to protect the workers from radioactive material. Drinker, along with fellow Harvard School of Public Health faculty members Katherine Drinker, his wife, and William Castle, agreed to visit the Orange, New Jersey, factory to observe the watch dial painters at work and to speak with their doctors. Eager to halt a mounting scandal, company President Arthur Roeder contacted industrial hygiene expert Cecil Drinker to investigate. Radium Corporation’s luminous watch dial factory were mysteriously falling ill and dying.
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