They may sound like a forgotten '80s new wave band, but the Radium Girls were actually young female employees who were hired in the early 20th century to paint watches with a special radium paint. They were told it was harmless, so plenty of them had fun with the glow-in-the-dark paint, but we know today that radium is anything but harmless. It led to the gradual deaths of the Radium Girls, and the saddest thing of all is just how preventable it all was. From the way they were ostracized to the special methods of burial, let's take a look at the messed-up truth about the Radium Girls.
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00:00The story of the Radium Girls is one of the most horrifying in recent history, yet it
00:04has been nearly forgotten today.
00:06What started as a fairly good job for a group of poor women, though, soon turned into a
00:11nightmare.
00:12This is the messed-up truth about the Radium Girls.
00:14Radium was discovered in 1898, and it didn't take long for entrepreneurs to see the potential
00:19value in its luminescent properties.
00:21A few years after it was discovered, William J. Hammer mixed it with zinc sulfide and created
00:25a paint.
00:26While he didn't patent the invention, Tiffany and Company did.
00:28The new paint was wildly popular in Europe first, and the people who worked with it would
00:32glow as they walked through the streets at night.
00:35It wasn't until 1914 that radium-based luminescent paint started to be produced in the United
00:39States.
00:40By 1921, the main manufacturer had already expanded a few times and moved, changing their
00:45name to the United States Radium Corporation, and patenting the name Undark for their paint.
00:50Other companies started popping up as well, using names like Luna and Marvlite for their
00:55paints.
00:56But instead of making paints, they were using those paints, too.
00:58U.S. Radium hired scores of girls and young women, some as young as just 11 years old,
01:03to paint watch dials with the glow-in-the-dark radium-based paint.
01:06To make sure the dials got a good coating, the girls were encouraged to put the paint
01:09brush between their lips and twirl it into a point.
01:12It was the best way to truly get precise numbers and brush strokes, but with each lick of the
01:17brush, they were swallowing radium, which we now know is radioactive.
01:21It wasn't long before U.S. Radium was even getting military contracts to paint watches
01:25and instrument panels, and that meant more work for the girls.
01:28Unfortunately, that also meant more exposure to radium.
01:31The workers had been assured that the paint was harmless, so they often played games with
01:35the paint.
01:36It was common for the girls to paint their fingernails and teeth in order to enjoy the
01:39glow-in-the-dark properties.
01:40"...paint our faces up, and put mustaches, and a couple girls painted their ears."
01:46Years later, Harvard physiologist Cecil Drinker did a study to see just how much radium the
01:50girls were actually covered in.
01:52He discovered that workers would be so covered with the paint and radium dust used everywhere
01:56in the plant that they would completely glow, and all along, they were assured it was safe.
02:02It's worth noting that this wasn't just a case of a corrupt company telling their employees
02:06their working conditions were safe, at least not at first.
02:10Radium was thought to be super healthy.
02:11In fact, it was often marketed as a cure-all.
02:14The radium craze started in earnest in 1904, when L.D. Gardner began marketing a radium-infused
02:19health water he called Liquid Sunshine.
02:22Belief in radium's healthy benefits was rooted in a massive misstep in logic.
02:26Early experiments using radium to kill cancer cells had been a success.
02:30If it could kill cancer, the assumption was that it could kill whatever else was ailing
02:34you.
02:35Real doctors started experimenting with it as a cure for things like tuberculosis and
02:38lupus, while quacks started marketing their own so-called cures for everything from acne
02:42and baldness to impotence and insanity.
02:45People drank radium water and brushed their teeth with radium toothpaste, and radium cosmetics
02:50were all the rage.
02:51Children played with toys painted with radium, and performers on the New York stage danced
02:55and twirled in costumes that glowed.
02:58Radium was in such high demand that prices soared.
03:00By 1915, a single gram cost what would be around $1.9 million in today's money.
03:06Luckily for consumers, that meant many of the products didn't contain real radium.
03:11The radium girls weren't so lucky, though.
03:13Very slowly, the workers began getting sick.
03:16Some started suffering from chronic exhaustion.
03:18For many, it started with their teeth.
03:20One by one, those teeth would start to decay and rot.
03:23When they were removed, their gums wouldn't heal.
03:25In some cases, the jaw would simply disintegrate at the dentist's touch.
03:29Bad breath was common.
03:31Skin became so delicate that the slightest touch would tear open wounds.
03:34Ulcers formed for some, and those that were pregnant bore stillborn babies.
03:39It was a variety of symptoms, and when the girls started looking for recompense, that
03:43became a huge problem.
03:44Attorneys for U.S. Radium argued that with all of these different ailments, they couldn't
03:48possibly have the same underlying cause.
03:50Unfortunately, there's no way to tell just how many dial painters there were, and how
03:55many died terrible, painful deaths.
03:57Of those we know about, many dial painters were typically in their 20s when they became
04:01really and truly ill.
04:03They were young women like Margaret Looney, who grew so weak her fiancé would pull her
04:07around in a wagon.
04:08"...when she got so bad and pulled her up to where we used to have the picnic.
04:13She couldn't walk, so he just put her in the wagon and away we went."
04:17Bones crumbled, limbs were amputated, spines were crushed under their own weight.
04:21The girls became anemic, bedridden, unable to eat.
04:24The pain was constant, and in the late 1930s, enough were dead or dying that they got national
04:29attention.
04:30U.S. Radium first tried to blame the girls' illness on an outbreak of syphilis, and it
04:34was years before the girls got their day in court.
04:37By that time, many testified from the same beds they would eventually die in, and they
04:41became known as the Society of the Living Dead.
04:44Companies didn't just try to blame the terrible illnesses on other causes, they absolutely
04:49took an active role in trying to cover up the truth.
04:51Margaret Looney was one of a family of ten, and would cover herself and her siblings with
04:55the radium paint.
04:57It took about six years for her to reach the end, and when she did finally collapse, she
05:01was at work when it happened.
05:02She was taken to a company hospital, and her family was told she had been quarantined for
05:06diphtheria.
05:07She died in the hospital at just 24 years old.
05:10Her death was swept under the carpet, and it would come out later that doctors had been
05:14hired to find out what was wrong with the painters as early as 1925.
05:18Those doctors had assured Looney and her co-workers that they were perfectly healthy, despite
05:22all the evidence to the contrary.
05:24The lawsuit started in the mid-1920s, but it was shockingly difficult to even find an
05:28attorney to take the girls' case.
05:31Why?
05:32When Looney and painters sued U.S. Radium in 1927, they were told they had passed the
05:36two-year statute of limitations for complaints.
05:38They didn't testify until 1928, and months of delays prompted the newspapers to pick
05:43up the story.
05:44Those women accepted an out-of-court settlement, and when Ottawa-based painters from the Radium
05:48Dial Company tried to sue in 1935, they ran into the same problems.
05:52They, however, refused to settle.
05:54It was another two years before their case was heard in court, and by then, Catherine
05:58Wolfe Donahue, one of the lead plaintiffs, had already collapsed at a previous hearing.
06:02She gave her testimony from her sickbed, and photos were plastered all over the country's
06:06newspapers.
06:07They won their case, but it was a hollow victory.
06:10The girls were often saddled with massive medical bills, and by the time medical bills
06:14and legal fees were paid, the Radium girls got next to nothing for their pain and suffering.
06:18Even those that won an annual stipend didn't get much, since they didn't live long enough
06:22to collect.
06:23There was another byproduct of the trial.
06:25The girls who were part of the so-called Society of the Living Dead weren't aided by
06:28their community.
06:29They were shunned.
06:31Writer and historian Kate Moore says that in spite of the fact that these were young
06:34mothers, wives, and girls who were dying, the communities they lived in just didn't
06:37want to acknowledge what was happening to them.
06:40After talking to locals and reading countless documents, she found that it was an overwhelming
06:44belief that they just needed to be quiet about the whole thing.
06:47Why?
06:48The jobs paid very well at a time when work was scarce.
06:50It was the Great Depression, after all, and locals were afraid that if the Radium girls
06:54won their case, that work would go away.
06:57Not all of the Radium girls died young, but those who did survive struggled with predictably
07:01awful health issues.
07:02Take Mae Keane, who died in 2014 at the admirable age of 107.
07:06She was hired on as a dial painter in 1924.
07:09Fortunately for her, though, she didn't like it.
07:11When she was taught how to point the brush with her lips, she was revolted by the taste
07:15of the Radium paint.
07:16Keane said she only worked there for a few days when she was called into the office and
07:19asked if she would like to quit.
07:21She said yes.
07:22However, over the course of her life, she suffered from chronic health problems, including
07:26ones that sound eerily similar to those suffered by the girls who died, bad teeth and migraines,
07:31and two diagnoses of cancer.
07:33As it turns out, dying women and some guilty verdicts couldn't stop the Radium paint industry.
07:38Katherine Donahue weighed less than 60 pounds when she died, before Radium Dial finished
07:42appealing their case before the Supreme Court.
07:44In 1934, their president, Joseph Kelly, was kicked out of the company.
07:48But Radium Dial wouldn't be the last company he opened.
07:51After Radium Dial went out of business, Kelly simply moved to a building down the road and
07:55reopened as Luminous Processes.
07:57He hired a workforce from among the girls who had been put out of work when Radium Dial
08:00closed, and he kept them painting for a long time.
08:03It wasn't until 1976 that Luminous was fined by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
08:08That commission found that Luminous had been exposing their workers to radiation levels
08:121,666 times higher than regulations allowed.
08:16Assets were shuffled, Luminous closed, and the lawsuits that continued into the 1980s
08:21went largely unpaid.
08:23The Radium Girls weren't just sick.
08:24They were very literally radioactive.
08:27Molly McGeough was exhumed in 1927 in the hopes that her bones would give still-living
08:31Radium Girls the evidence they needed to win in court.
08:34Reportedly, when her coffin was lifted out of the ground, her body actually glowed.
08:39That wasn't entirely surprising, considering her bones were found to be highly radioactive.
08:44Ottawa, Illinois, was known as Death City throughout the 1930s.
08:48In 1987, the documentary Radium City tried to show just how long-lasting the effects
08:52were, in a very graphic way.
08:55When one man headed into the Catholic cemetery where many of the Radium Girls were buried,
08:59the Geiger counter he carried goes nuts.
09:01Their remains, six feet down, are still radioactive.
09:04With some of the girls, precautions were even taken.
09:06Margaret Looney and Catherine Donahue were buried in lead-lined coffins.
09:10And yes, devotees of Radium-based health products are just as radioactive.
09:14Industrialist and golfer Eben Byers was the poster child for a drink called Radiothor,
09:19and drank several bottles of it a day.
09:21Holes formed in his skull, his jaw fell off, and his bones began to crumble.
09:25He died in 1932, and was so radioactive that he was also buried in a lead-lined coffin.
09:31If you think the legacy of the Radium Girls ended when the companies using Radium-based
09:35paint closed, you'd be sorely mistaken.
09:38After Radium Dial closed, the building was converted into a meatpacking plant.
09:42After the meatpacking plant closed, it became a farmer's co-op, and it was finally torn
09:46down in 1968.
09:47The rubble was used as fill around the city of Ottawa.
09:50The building that housed Luminous didn't fare much better.
09:52For years after the plant closed, it was also used for storing meat.
09:56Eventually, 16 separate sites around Ottawa would become classified as Superfund sites,
10:01requiring long-term intensive hazardous waste removal.
10:03NPR Illinois says that many have been cleaned up, but as of 2018, there was at least one
10:08site that still remained a highly radioactive and terrifying legacy of the Radium Girls.