The owners and scientists at US Radium, familiar with the real hazards of radioactivity, naturally took extensive precautions to protect themselves.Īn estimated 4,000 workers were hired by corporations in the U.S. US Radium had even distributed literature to the medical community describing the “injurious effects” of radium. Chemists at the plant used lead screens, masks and tongs.
Radium Corporation hired some 70 women to perform various tasks including the handling of radium, while the owners and the scientists familiar with the effects of radium carefully avoided any exposure to it themselves. Their plant in New Jersey employed over a hundred workers, mainly women, to paint radium-lit watch faces and instruments, believing it to be safe. Radium was a major supplier of radioluminescent watches to the military. Radium Corporation, originally called the Radium Luminous Material Corporation, was engaged in the extraction and purification of radium from carnotite ore to produce luminous paints, which were marketed under the brand name “Undark.” As a defense contractor, U.S. Some also painted their fingernails with the glowing substance.įive of the women challenged their employer in a court case that established the right of individual workers who contract occupational diseases to sue their employers.įrom 1917 to 1926, U.S. The women, who had been told the paint was harmless, ingested deadly amounts of radium by licking their paintbrushes to sharpen them. The Radium Girls were a group of female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with glow-in-the-dark paint at the United States Radium factory in Orange, New Jersey around 1917. Women at work in a US Radium Corporation factory