Simultaneously, Radium Dial was opening locations in Illinois and recruiting more dial-painters, usually still young, poor, female immigrants.Īfter other young women developed mysterious illnesses, aches, pains, and limps, Katherine Schaub took matters into her own hands, contacting the Department of Labor to demand an investigation. The poisoned tissue spread throughout her jaw until it bled so profusely that she choked on her own blood and died. Amelia Maggia was the first medically documented case: After complaining of a toothache, its removal revealed an open wound that never healed. The women who remained at the factory began to experience symptoms of radiation poisoning. Administrators at US Radium were aware of this but ignored it for the sake of profits. By this time, scientists already were learning of radium’s toxicity. The company was renamed United States Radium Corporation.
Many of the women at the factories developed close friendships-even as they were inadvertently ingesting a chemical that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.Īfter World War I ended, many of the workers left the company and started families. The many job openings at the factory garnered excitement in the town, and the young women eagerly recruited their siblings, family, and friends to join, as the work was well-paid and more pleasant than most other jobs available to women of their social class at the time. Along with other immigrant girls, she was instructed to paint watch dials with luminescent paint for use by soldiers. Moore highlights a few key figures, including Katherine Schaub, a teenager who was hired to work at Radium Luminous Materials Corporation during World War I. Part 1 describes the early, happy days of radium dial production. The book is a cautionary tale about the overly optimistic narratives of invention and rapid commercialization that have become commonplace in the modern world, and an indictment of corporate greed and disregard for human life. These women bore the consequences of releasing an untested substance into mass production, sustaining extreme pain, disability, and death from ingesting radium.
Moore chronicles the lives of many young female employees of the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation in Newark, New Jersey and Radium Dial in Ottawa, Illinois.
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