Young women who absorbed huge amounts of radium through the mouth, through contact with the powder and through inhaling. This book recounts the discovery and denial by the companies that made fortunes through the toil and eventual pain of these It wasn't long before strange physical things began happening to them-horrifying things. In addition to being well paid, there was a respect for these girls as they were identified as talented artists in the community. After all this was war time and they doing it for the troops. Of course they were paid by the pieces so rewarded for do as many as fast as they could. The finer the edge they could draw the crisper the dial would be therefore this method was highly encouraged and, indeed, this was the way the girls were trained to do the painting. They used very fine artists brushes that they moisten and twist into tiny points in their mouths. The dials were painted by girls as young as 15 using a compound of materials one of which was powdered radium. Historically this was a time when men were at war and the only people available for this task were women, young women in particular. At this time not much was known about the side effects of coming into contact with this vicious element. This meant that someone needed to apply the radium by hand. Applying radium to the dials of equipment made it possible to function at night. This proved to be very helpful in the growing fields of aviation and navigation, especially during World War 1. Experiments showed it to have many interesting properties not the least of which was glowing in the dark. Late in the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries the French physicists, the Curies, discovered a new element called radium. This book is superbly written and a gripping narration of a horrifying situation. Tweetįirst I want to say that I am a fiction reader and shy away from non-fiction almost 100% so that understand when I say that I couldn't put down this book that it is a big thing.
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It is the powerful tale of a group of ordinary women from the Roaring Twenties, who themselves learned how to roar. Their employers denied all responsibility, but these courageous women – in the face of unimaginable suffering – refused to accept their fate quietly, and instead became determined to fight for justice.ĭrawing on previously unpublished diaries, letters and interviews, The Radium Girls is an intimate narrative of an unforgettable true story. It turned out that the very thing that had made them feel alive – their work – was slowly killing them: the radium paint was poisonous. However, as the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious and crippling illnesses.
It was a fun job, lucrative and glamorous – the girls shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in dust from the paint. One of The Reading Agency Books of the Year 2018īuy this book from .uk to support The Reading Agency and local bookshops at no additional cost to you.Īs the First World War spread across the world, young American women flocked to work in factories, painting clocks, watches and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium.
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