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Maggia died on September 12, 1922, of a massive hemorrhage. Doctors were puzzled as to the cause of her condition, and, oddly, they determined that she had died of syphilis. In growing numbers, other Radium Girls became deathly ill, experiencing many of the same agonizing symptoms as Maggia.
The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting radium dials – watch dials and hands with self-luminous paint.
Jun 7, 2024 · Radium Girls, factory workers in radium dial factories, fell ill with anemia, cancer and necrosis of the jaw due to radium poisoning from glow-in-the-dark paint. Radium, initially promoted as a cure-all, was used in consumer products and later in radium paint for instruments during World War I.
- The New Technology That Paved The Way For Radium Girls
- The Lethal Dangers of Radium
- The Dangerous Work of The Radium Girls
- The Horrific Health Consequences of Working with Radium
- The Radium Girls Fight Back
- The Legacy of The Radium Girls
The radium-infused paint was a new invention in 1917. Though Pierre and Marie Curie had first identified the element in 1898, it wasn’t until 1910 that Marie successfully isolated a sample of it to work with. Right away, the couple knew their discovery was dangerous. Marie gave herself several unpleasant burns after improperly handling radium. Pier...
Unfortunately, that bright element had a dark side, one that the radium girls would soon experience firsthand. The only stable isotope of radium is radium-226, which has a half-life of 1,600 years. For as long as it lasts, any sample of radium will emit alpha particles in all directions. Normally, alpha radiation is harmless in small doses. Countle...
The men who worked for USRC wore lead aprons to protect them from this radiation, which was known to have a cumulative effect. The radium girls were given no protection of any kind and even encouragedto lick their brushes to get a fine point for detail work. The reason the company gave for this difference was that the male engineers were handling h...
In January of 1922, radium girl Mollie Maggia got a toothache. She went to the dentist, who told her the molar needed to come out. A few weeks later, she was back to have the tooth next to that one pulled. Neither wound healed, but they grew together and seeped blood and pus into Mollie’s mouth. More teeth had to come out after that. By May, her de...
The accusations from the radium girls began rolling in. Way back before the USRC had started operations, the firm’s president had commissioned safety studies on the glowing muck and had come away satisfied it was safe. By 1924, when dozens of radium girls were sick or dead, an independent study – one that USRC didn’t pay for – established that radi...
Vindication came too late for most of the radium girls. Many died young, usually in horrible pain and fear, while others lived many years with weakened bones, lost teeth, and various forms of cancer, which may or may not have been caused by their exposure to radium as teens. After a typically protracted and ugly court battle, some of the girls were...
Dec 28, 2014 · In all, by 1927, more than 50 women had died as a direct result of radium paint poisoning. But Keane was among the hundreds who survived. Over the years, she had some health problems — bad teeth...
Sep 1, 2019 · It was 97 years ago this month that the first of the radium girls died, leading survivors to take their employer to court, paving the way for new laws that forever changed work safety practices ...
May 10, 2024 · The five “Radium Girls” died over the next few months and years. Their fate was already sealed when they dipped paintbrushes into radium paint and sharpened the bristles with their mouths.
