Sickening History: The Radium Girls

 

So, America--Land of the free and home of the brave. We've had it pounded into our heads that the United States has always been the land of opportunity. If you are willing to work you can make something of yourself.

 

If we look at the actual history of the U.S., we see a few examples of those who have made it big, but they did so by exploiting the millions of ignorant folks who came to America looking for the land of milk and honey.

 

The Occupy Wall Street movement that is currently sweeping the U.S. is refocusing our attention on the effects of corporations run by the ultra greedy and ultral selfish. As long as THEIR bank accounts are full, then screw everyone else. There have been countless examples of worker exploitation, but one of the better known is the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and resultant fire.

 

Lesser known is the story of the Radium Girls. Radium was one of two elements that were discovered by Marie Curie. (If you have the chance, read up on Marie Curie--her history is interesting.) Radium is an element that glows as a result of it's radioactivity. Although the general public was not made aware of it's dangerous effects, the defense industry had a need for glowing dials on aircraft and for use in other applications. It's commercial uses were many, but lets not let public or worker safety stand in the way of making a buck.

 

Enter the U.S. Radium Corporation. 

"From 1917 to 1926, U.S. 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. Radium was a major supplier of radioluminescent watches to the military. 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.

The U.S. 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; chemists at the plant used lead screens, masks and tongs. US Radium had even distributed literature to the medical community describing the “injurious effects” of radium. The owners and scientists at US Radium, familiar with the real hazards of radioactivity, naturally took extensive precautions to protect themselves.

An estimated 4,000 workers were hired by corporations in the U.S. and Canada to paint watch faces with radium. They mixed glue, water and radium powder, and then used camel hair brushes to apply the glowing paint onto dials. The then-current rate of pay, for painting 250 dials a day, was about a penny and a half per dial. The brushes would lose shape after a few strokes, so the U.S. Radium supervisors encouraged their workers to point the brushes with their lips, or use their tongues to keep them sharp. For fun, the Radium Girls painted their nails, teeth and faces with the deadly paint produced at the factory Many of the workers became sick. It is unknown how many died from exposure to radiation. The factory sites became Superfund cleanup sites.

Many of the women later began to suffer from anemia, bone fractures and necrosis of the jaw, a condition now known as radium jaw. It is thought that the X-ray machines used by the medical investigators may have contributed to some of the sickened workers' ill-health by subjecting them to additional radiation. It turned out at least one of the examinations was a ruse, part of a campaign of disinformation started by the defense contractor.

 U.S. Radium and other watch-dial companies rejected claims that the afflicted workers were suffering from exposure to radium. For some time, doctors, dentists, and researchers complied with requests from the companies not to release their data. At the urging of the companies, worker deaths were attributed by medical professionals to other causes; syphilis was often cited in attempts to smear the reputations of the women. One of the workers, Peg Loone, died from radiation poisoning at the age of 24.

The story of the abuse perpetrated against the workers is distinguished from most such cases by the fact that the ensuing litigation was covered widely by the media. Plant worker Grace Fryer decided to sue, but it took two years for her to find a lawyer willing to take on U.S. Radium. A total of five factory workers, dubbed the Radium Girls, joined the suit. The litigation and media sensation surrounding the case established legal precedents and triggered the enactment of regulations governing labor safety standards, including a baseline of 'provable suffering'.

The Radium Girls saga holds an important place in the history of both the field of health physics and the labor rights movement. The right of individual workers to sue for damages from corporations due to labor abuse was established as a result of the Radium Girls case. In the wake of the case, industrial safety standards were demonstrably enhanced for many decades.

The case was settled in the fall of 1928, before the trial was deliberated by the jury, and the settlement for each of the Radium Girls was $10,000 (the equivalent of $128,000 in 2010 dollars) and a $600 per year annuity while they lived, and all medical and legal expenses incurred would also be paid by the company.

The lawsuit and resulting publicity was a factor in the establishment of occupational disease labor lawRadium dial painters were instructed in proper safety precautions and provided with protective gear; in particular, they no longer shaped paint brushes by lip, and avoided ingesting or breathing the paint. Radium paint was still used in dials as late as the 1960s, but there were no further injuries to dial painters. This served to highlight that the injuries suffered by the Radium Girls were completely preventable."

 

For most of my life I have favored a capitalist system and the fact is that socialism and communism have failed as practiced, but something needs to change. We desperately need an alternative to what we now have in the U.S.

 

I hope the OWS protests produce some good results--interpret that as you will.