The Radium Girls: The Glow Sold as a Miracle and the Deaths Given Another Name

In 1917, in Orange, New Jersey, teenagers sat at long tables and painted tiny numbers on watch dials with a luminous mixture. The job was clean, paid well for young immigrant women, and looked like a safe piece of modern industry. At night the watches glowed because of radium, a new element that newspapers praised as a cancer cure and a sign of scientific progress.

The brush tips quickly spread. Supervisors told the painters to draw each brush through their lips to restore a sharp point. Every pass put a little paint in the worker’s mouth. Scientists handling radium elsewhere in the same industry used tongs, shielding, and protective clothing; the women making the dials were told that the tiny amount on a brush could not hurt them. Years later teeth fell out, jawbones died, blood failed, and bone tumors appeared. When the women asked why, the company and some doctors did not call it radium poisoning. They shifted the blame to syphilis, dental disease, or a supposed problem of female health.