The lasting legacy of the women's fight led to the introduction of new safety standards to protect a whole new generation of dial painters, as well as those working with plutonium in making atomic bombs. It took eight appeals before the former radium girls finally had a victory, in October 1939. ![]() An autopsy soon proved that "each and every portion of tissue and bone tested gave evidence of radioactivity". Indeed, such watches have become collectors items in their own right and are sought through. During the case, the body of Molly Maggia was exhumed and taken away for an autopsy.Īccording to Moore, Maggia's body was in "a good state of preservation" five years after her death. Radium ( 226 Ra) activated dial watches (pocket and wristwatches) are still in circulation, although not to the extent they were in the 1970s when there was estimated to be over 10 million watches in the USA with luminous 226 Ra dials ( NCRP, 1977 ). In 1927, five former dial painters, led by Catherine Donohue and represented by lawyer Leonard Grossman, (working pro bono), filed a legal case against the US Radium Corporation. vmzIvyoOPC- Pulp Librarian JanuA VICTORY AT LAST After a long trial and painful testimony they won their case. It took the death of a male employee of the radium firm for experts to finally take the issue seriously.įinally in 1938 five women - dubbed the Radium Girls - sued the Radiant Dial Company they worked for after Radium exposure left them close to death. ![]() But 800 miles away in Ottawa, Illinois, where a new studio had opened, the painters were unaware of the problems - and their employers did not inform them of the now-established danger." Moore writes: "In New Jersey, the women's illnesses had an understandable effect on the profession's popularity: dial painting declined. Discovered in 1898 by the Curies, radium was all the rage in the early decades of the 20th century. The only study into the safety of radium was conducted in the same factory.Īccording to Moore, instead of radium firms suspending dial-painting, the managers refused to accept any responsibility and vowed to find the "real cause" of the women's illness. Radium Girls (Lydia Dean Pilcher and Ginny Mohler, 2018) takes its inspiration from the infuriating history of watch-dial painters of the 1910s-1930s who were poisoned and then abandoned by the radium industry. Estimates of the activity of 226 Ra in the watches ranged from 0.063 to 1.063 Ci (2.31 to 39.31 kBq) for pocket watches and from 0.013 to 0.875 Ci (0. ![]() Radium was not suspected at first because the official line was that it was safe in small doses. Radium was formerly used in self-luminous paints for watches, nuclear panels, aircraft switches, clocks, and instrument dials. sbR334rpAE- Pulp Librarian JanuON THE BRINK OF DEATH Radium watch hands under ultraviolet light. In the 1920s it was marketed as a 'scientific' panacea of wellness. Radium and radioactivity was soon a main ingredient in quack medicine: with extravagent claims made for its health-restoring and energetic properties.
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