Thread:

Recently I’ve spent a lot of time in this lockdown reading about labor, migrant labor, labor laws in different countries etc. And I came across a fascinating story that I didn’t know of before, quite by accident. This story tells us why labor protection laws matter.

It’s the story of the #RadiumGirls. I’m putting this out here because it’s about women, labor and how labor protection evolved in the last century in the US. Maybe many of you already know this one. For me it’s new.

We all know that Marie Curie and her husband discovered radium in 1898 and later she went on to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911. Soon after it was discovered, radium came to be used in watch faces because it had this glow-in-the-dark property.

A company called US Radium Corporation or USRC created a paint called Undark which was a mixture of radium and zinc sulphide. This was used to paint the hands and strokes on the watch faces.

Anyhoo, between 1917 and the mid 1920s, many women had joined the industrial workforce and there were many female workers in three USRC plants. Their job, paint the clock faces with Undark paint. In doing so, they had been taught to keep the brushes pointed by, I guess,

placing it on their lips in a particular way between uses. They were told the paint wasn’t harmful. Many women would use the paint on their teeth to make them shine and on their fingernails like nailpolish maybe? I don’t know.

They were given no protective gear and had to

mix their own paint. Soon many started getting sick and to hush it up they were told they had syphillis (they would be too ashamed to discuss it), and when they died the official cause of death in some cases was recorded as syphillis.

There’s this great three part story on this case here: https://www.wired.com/2011/03/life-in-the-undark/

It talks about how studies on radiation by radium were silenced and then one medical officer found that the women were exhaling radon gas. I had to close my eyes when I read that bit.

That particular “time-saving” technique of pointing the brushes against the lips was “the worst way to absorb the poison...When a person swallowed radium, the body channeled it in a way similar to calcium – some was metabolized away, some went toward nerve and muscle function,

Most was deposited in the bones”. (From the same Wired article).

Finally the women filed a lawsuit against the company. The names you have to know are Grace Fryer, Albina Larice, Quinta MacDonald, Katherine Schaub and Edna Hussman.

The company lawyers kept trying to delay the proceedings hoping the women would die. When they reached court in 1928 they couldn’t raise their hands to take the oath, so damaged were their bodies. In the run up to the battle, the body of former worker, Amelia Maggia, was exhumed

Amelia Maggia had died in 1923. In 1928 parts of her bones were still glowing. (I was so scared on reading about this). This was unshakeable testimony that USRC had put the workers in harm’s way. The company settled out or court and offered the women ten thousand dollars

And a small pension.

Claudia Clark has an excellent book called “Radium Girls”. And so does Kate Moore “The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women”.

It was due to these women that occupational safety became a big deal and standards were established to protect

labor from exploitative labor practices. It was also the case that paved the way for individual employees to sue companies.

It’s just such a sad and exploitative story. But those women were simply amazing. I have so much respect for that struggle.

They were all deceased by 1946.

Interestingly, Kate Moore argues that part of the reason no one took this occupational hazard claim seriously is because the workers were women.

Aside: next time you feel the urge to say diluting laws that protect labor is good for the economy, just check yourself a tad.