The Radium Girls: They Were Told the Glow Was Safe

In 1917, young women in Orange, New Jersey, painted glowing watch dials with radium paint, and they were taught to shape their brushes with their lips. "Lip, dip, paint." Within a few years many were sick, and some were dying. This is the story of the Radium Girls: the dial painters of the United States Radium Corporation (Orange, NJ) and the Radium Dial Company (Ottawa, IL), Dr. Harrison Martland, Grace Fryer's 1928 settlement, and Catherine Donohue's 1938 victory, which she won months before she died. The jokes in this video are about the companies and the radium craze. They are never about the women. Chapters: 0:00 Lip, Dip, Paint 0:39 The Miracle Element 1:33 Radium Jaw 2:31 Five Women vs. U.S. Radium 3:28 Ottawa: Same Paint, Same Story 4:30 The Glow That Lingers Sources: 1. Coursey BM, "The National Bureau of Standards and the Radium Dial Painters," J. Res. NIST 126:126051 (2021): Fryer's employment 1917–1920, lip-pointing, Martland's 1925 breath tests, the May 1927 Berry suit, Mollie Maggia's 1927 exhumation, the June 1928 settlement, Evans's measurements, the 0.1 µg limit in NBS Handbook 27 (1941) and its use for Manhattan Project plutonium standards. https://doi.org/10.6028/jres.126.051 2. Martland HS, Conlon P, Knef JP, "Some unrecognized dangers in the use and handling of radioactive substances," JAMA 85:1769–1776 (Dec 5, 1925). https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/arti... 3. National Archives, "The Radium Girls" (Citizen Archivist, 2018): the June 1928 settlement terms ($10,000, $600/yr annuity, medical costs). https://www.archives.gov/files/citizen-arc... 4. New York Times, June 5, 1928, "Radium Victims Win $50,000 and Pensions in Suit Settlement." https://www.nytimes.com/1928/06/05/archive... 5. Library of Congress, Headlines & Heroes, "Radium Girls: Living Dead Women" (2019): the Ottawa case, Grossman, Donohue's sickbed testimony, her death on July 27, 1938, and the Supreme Court's refusal on Oct 23, 1939. https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2... 6. People ex rel. Radium Dial Co. v. Ryan, 371 Ill. 597 (1939): the July 6, 1938 award to Catherine Wolfe Donohue under the Illinois Occupational Diseases Act. https://openjurist.org/371/ill/597/people-... 7. Northwestern University Library, Catherine Wolfe Donohue papers (biographical note). https://findingaids.library.northwestern.e... 8. Northern Public Radio, "Ottawa's 'Radium Girls' At Forefront of Worker Protections" (2017): the Feb 1938 hearing and the jaw-bone fragments. https://www.northernpublicradio.org/illino... 9. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, "Deadly occupation, forged reports" (2013): the Drinker report and the altered version. https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/centennial-r... 10. Philadelphia Inquirer, "Medical mystery: Dental pain that grew agonizing, then deadly" (2018): Fryer's bank job and her death on Oct 27, 1933, at 34. https://www.inquirer.com/philly/health/med... 11. Wikipedia, "Radium Girls" (overview, used for cross-checking only). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls Further reading: Kate Moore, The Radium Girls (2017); Claudia Clark, Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910–1935 (1997). Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com): "Sneaky Snitch" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) "Investigations" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) "Dark Times" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Visuals and narration voice are AI-generated. The characters are cartoon interpretations, not likenesses. Sound effects are synthesized. #history #radiumgirls #science