Episode 29: Radium Girls

The Radium Girls painted glowing watch dials and were instructed to point their brushes with their lips. When radium lodged in their bones, illness followed, and proving the cause became another fight. CC and Kitty trace the dial painters, the New Jersey and Illinois cases, and their lasting place in workplace-safety history. SOURCES: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A1chymov https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/themes/marie-and-pierre-curie-and-the-discovery-of-polonium-and-radium/ https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2018-12/documents/significant_discoveries_history_radiation_protection-worksheet_rp_1.pdf https://www.damninteresting.com/undark-and-the-radium-girls/ https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-basics https://www.labxchange.org/library/items/lb:LabXchange:7004d592:html:1 https://live-ucalgary.ucalgary.ca/sites/default/files/teams/246/death-by-numbers_the-mysterious-illness-of-the-dial-painters.pdf https://njwomenshistory.org/biographies/katherine-schaub/ https://time.com/archive/6662284/medicine-poison-paintbrush/ https://njms.rutgers.edu/departments/division_radiation/history_pub.php https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls https://www.perspectivesofhistory.com/post/the-consumers-league-and-the-radium-girls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_fad https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm https://www.archives.gov/files/citizen-archivist/images/08-23-2018-radium-girls.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_of_Chancery https://www.osha.gov/ https://text-message.blogs.archives.gov/2018/01/04/the-radium-girls-at-the-national-archives/ https://www.epa.gov/superfund/what-superfund