Radium girls

Martha Irvine, Radium Girls, Associated Press, Buffalo News, 1998. 

Figure 4.4 "The Radium Girls" were women in 1920s New Jersey who painted watch faces with radium, an element that glows in the dark. Because the women were in constant contact with the radioactive element, they experienced numerous health problems years later. Some even died because of radiation poisoning.

Radiation—the energy particles released by radioactive elements—can be a friend or foe to the human body. As The Radium Girls discovered, radiation can destroy cells and change the DNA in cells in a way that increases the risk of cancer. Yet radiation therapy is also widely used as a treatment for cancer, because carefully targeted radiation can be used to kill cancer cells. 

Clark, C. Radium Girls Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910-1935. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1997. 

Women factory workers primarily applied the paint to the dials using fine, camel hair bmshes. To get the paint bmsh tip very fine, many workers touched the brushes to their lips and tongues between strokes. By the mid-1920s, serious medical and dental cases appeared. The tooth sockets of extracted teeth failed to heal. Jaw bones began to deteriorate and disintegrate. Treatments were not effective. Some workers with such health problems soon died. The workers became known as the Radium Girls. ... 

I. Botsch, Organizing the Breathless Claudia Clark, Radium Girls Judkins, We Offer Ourselves as Evidence Rosner and Markowitz, Deadly Dust Barbara Ellen Smith, Digging Our Own Graves. 

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