Who were the Radium Girls?

Answer 1

This is a sad tale. The Radium Girls, five employees of the United States Radium Corporation, were women who worked with radium paints and sued the company because they became ill. Grace Fryer, Edna Hussman, Katherine Schaub, and sisters Quinta McDonald and Albina Larice were the plaintiffs in this famous lawsuit. All of them ended up dying within a few years of the litigation, and all their deaths were a direct result of radiation poisoning due to radium. These women (and many others) applied the radium-containing coatings to the dials of clocks and aircraft instruments so they would "glow in the dark" and could be seen without light (owing to the radioluminescent property of the paints). Radioluminescent paint contains a radioactive isotope (in this case radium-226) combined with a radioluminescent substance (copper-doped zinc sulfide paint). To paint on the radium compounds, these women would put the tips of the brushes (that had the radium paint on them) on their lips to give the bristles an optimum shape. This quite naturally left a bit of the highly radioactive material on their lips. Over a period of time, these women got a large dose of radiation, and they (and a large number of others who worked with them as well as others who worked to refine the radium and make the paints) developed serious (and sometimes fatal) medical maladies. They had been told the paint was harmless. A link to the Wikipedia article on the Radium Girls is provided. A link is also provided to the imdb post on the 1987 documentary film "Radium City" which covers the particulars. This film is worth watching. It's accurate, gritty.