Legacy and Modern Workplace Safety

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With Mint, you can get premium wireless for just fifteen dollars a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments, but that's weird. Okay, one judgment Anyway, give it a try at mintmobile. com slash switch. Upront payment of forty five dollars for three month plan, equivalent to fifteen dollars per month required, intro rate for three months only, then full price plan options available. taxes and fees extra.aal terms at Mintmobile. com. Hey, Weirdos, I'm Ash and I'm Elena and this is Morin is Mor good. I don't even know why I sang it. It just started happening and I went with it. Ashes Scunty. Yeah I believe the word you're looking for is scnty Gnty. It' Gary and guny But me and Mikey have determined that She shall remain as such today open was opening. because that's a scunty behavior. She is in a place of scunt right now. Serving scunt, scunt,nt scunt It Ruby. I don't know serving sc. We did magic this morning and we did. Why are you laughing? That's the truth. She's just like, I don't know. We just did magic this morning. There's more two. There's more, there's more. We did magic this morning and we did manifestations. and I manifested myself love and light and abundance and I'm feeling all of those things. She's feeling abundance. I think 'cause mine went crazy. It did go crazy. And I think it just reignited my scunty soul It said baby Party on, Pa I think it's supposed Isn' it astrologically there's some bullshit happening. Tyron's in retrograde Exactly. I don't know if it's Chirron or Ch Ron, so come h at me, bro, but Is that good or is that bad? I think that's pretty bad. Oh okay. Well that'll makes sense. Let me do a little Google Do goog. I need to get it under a wrap. D d googy Yeah, I just went into retrogride Well I'll tell you what it means for you and your astrological sign. Not all of you do. But Capricorns a gemini. Yeah, let's go. Ecept the cookies because that's the only thing you're allowed to do in life I always accept cookies in reality Obviously. So considered an asteroid and a comet, Chyron Chyron begins its annual retrograde on july twenty sixth It will take place as Chyron Chyron is positioned in the first Zodiac side of Aries where it has been since twenty ten. it's going to last until the day after your birthday, Alena. day after your birthday. The day of your birthday, L know. So for me Chion Kiron, retetrograde holds a mirror to the medicine within you, medicine for yourself, which, when claimed, becomes medicine for all. like Chiron Kiron's mythological journey, retetrograde is an invitation to step into the role of healer and observe how your experiences and the gold you have gleaned from them are your ing world I don't know if it resonates, but whatever. Oh you Gemin? Germinas Now Capricorn, Chiron Kiron is a doorway between the spiritual and the human. and for the last six years, Chiron Kiron years We've been doing the podcast for six years. Whoa, hopefully that I haven't read ahead so I don't know what this is. Has been cracking open the foundations of who you are so that you can remember yourself as the doorway. This retrograde invites you deep within traveling with you down into your roots, formative years and earlier memories. There is medicine here waiting for you and I' Listen, o my goodness. Take a doough bitch. just a spoon full of sugar. Also just to just to say who I was reading that from Oouse that would be t b every I'm the medicine. Take a dose spinch There it is You found your housewives. let's go.ad.. I t shirts. J just to give credit where credit is due. That was from the yoga journal. Thanks, Yoga journal. You're welcome. So all you Capricorns and Germinas out there, now you know that one of you is the medicine and the other one needs it. So I what a beautiful oututside look glance at our relationship I love that. Sometimes you're the medicine, though. I hope so. Sometimes I don't always need I don't always need the medicine You don't always need me? No I'm asking like I'm like, okay, good, I'm not the one that always needs the medicine. No, that's good. Sometes sometometimes. No. A lot of the time I need the medicine Well Speaking of medicine and ch speaking of you know, scientific advancements in medicine We're gonna talk about the radium girls today. The radium girls. Yes. So seed, did you see that segue? We're talking about medicine and science and Lular chemical elements and shit it's there. But we're gonna talk about the radium girls today. everyverybody. This is a little different. It's a different I mean, my tummy's growling. I don't know if anyone heard that. It's adigesting the eggplant. It is. I had egg. Uh but This is a little different case because it's not like, is it like dark history sort of? Yeah It's definitely, you know Most people would say a crime has occurred here. You toald me a couple of things. it sure sounds like it. But a different kind. So let's get into it Shall we So we're going start off first by Kind of giving a brief you know, look into what radium is because I don't know if I know. without understanding radium This isn't gonna to hit hisart. I mean it's gonna to hit, but you're gonna be like, what the fuck is that? Yeah. So in eighteen ninety eight, after spending years researching the radioactive nature of mineral pitch blend, of which uranium is a major element. Okay. Polish French scientist, you might have heard of her, Marie Curie. Marie Curie Madam Curie. I thought that sounded familiar and a hubby. P They concluded that the pitch blend contained at least two other previously undiscovered chemical elements. One of these elements was radium. Now, a lot of elements on the periodic table are freely occurring elements. Yes. Radium is not one of those A freely occurring element is an element that is not combined with or chemically bonded with other chemical elements. Okay, but radium instead is a byproduct produced in the decay of uranium An radioactive element. Oh, okay, that's interesting. Yeah So radium requires a very long process of isolation in order to be extracted In fact, with the help of her laboratory assistant, Andre, I hope I say this right Dave Barn Did he have a debian Madame Cure required several tons of pitch blend before she was able to extract just one tenth of a gram of radium. Wha. is It was incredibly rare So Cure's discovery of radium was notable for many reasons. One of the biggest was that it proved that there were other elements in nature that were not even discovered yet. Yeah, that's holy shit. We don't even know about. How cool that a woman found it? She's a bad ass. Totally. Also the discovery of radium served as the foundation of Cure's work in physics, which later she would get awarded a Nobel prize in chemistry for. Wow. And in the years that followed, she spent the majority of her career focused on isolating pure metallic radium, which she achieved in nineteen ten That must have been a little bit scary for her. Oh yeah, she's a badass. Yeah. She did all kinds of shit The girls have like one of those little like who was books Yeah on Marie Cie. And they also have like an just like a standalone book about Mari Ki actually So Marie Cury correctly theorized that among its potential uses, this new element she found could have important and honestly revolutionary applications in medicine like my segue. But the fact remained that it was really difficult and super costly to isolate and extract. It's not like this was easy to do. Right. It was also true that although not as well established or understood, radium was seriously hazardous and very difficult to handle For instance, in nineteen oh one, this is crazy In nineteen oh one, the Curees gave a fellow scientist a tiny little amount of radium. to present at a conference in Paris. And before leaving for France, this man tucked it was in a little vial. Yeah, like a glass vial. So he tucked that vial into an interior pocket of his jacket And cinem box exploded. Its sealed didn't open up But the next time he undressed, he noticed a red mark on his stomach that appeared to be worsening in the hours and days that followed. Oh no. And according to author Kate Moore She said, quote, It didn't get bigger, but it seemed somehow to get deeper, as though his body was still exposed to the source of the wound, and the flame was burning him still. Oh my go. So what that scientist didn't know at the time was that he was experiencing a radiation burn from the tiny amount of radium in the vial that he and the Ces believe was totally safely stored in there Wh In fact, one of the other challenges of radium was that it has a relatively short shelf life and begins to break down really quickly., which is no Bueno. Yeah because it releases alpha, beta, and gamma radiation in the process, which is very damaging to living systems and tissue in unchecked amounts. Okay. So while the glass vial itself might have been safely tucked away in his jacket, the element inside that vial was blasting out radiation waves directly into his skin Oh my God, and probably like anybody that was even near him. Yeah. other people could have been exposed. ye In this in other cases of minor exposure, and that's minor exposure The injury appears like a worsening burn, like it keeps getting worse, but the body will heal itself on its own eventually when it's separated from the source But in more severe cases or in cases of repeated exposure to this radiation You can be disfigured or you can die because As we'll see in this case of the Radium girls If it gets inside of you It just keeps into radi It's like it keeps getting lit and lit and lit. like it doesn't heal. It won't allow your body to heal itself. So like minor wounds won't heal themselves. Oh my God. You could get if you're if you ingest this radium, and you scratched your arm it wouldn't heal. You'd have an open wound forever. and that would be it Yeah So despite the dangerous and costly risks associated with handling and extracting radium, it did seem like a huge thing of value for a lot of different avenues, like if they could get it under control particularly in manufacturing In its process of decay, the particles inside of it charge one of its phosphorus components, zinc sulfide And this causes what a lot of people know about radium, a green glow Okay, Phosphorescence kind of glow. Yeah. Because the glow is a natural part of the process of decay of radium, it didn't need an external source of power to make that happen, which is like a really ideal source of light for certain circumstances and environments. That being said, this luminescent glow was pretty minimal and it continued to break down over time. so it was limited with how it could be used But throughout the first decade of the twentieth century, several extraction plants were established across the US to like harness the power of radium. Wow. 'Cause they were just like, what is this? L what can we do? glows. Like what do we do with this? Cool. It glows. L like we got this out. This is wigy cool. Now, among those enthusiastic about the potential of radium was doctor Sabin. I think it's Sabin, Arnold von Sashaki. whooa. who was a chemical scientist who in nineteen fifteen developed luminescent paint. O the paint seemed to be an ideal use for radium since it really didn't require much radium to produce, and it could be used to paint clock and watch faces instrument panels and other objects that really required minimal light to be seen in the dark, but it could make certain things glow. So you could like, especially the clock faces, like if if you've seen them from like the fifties and stuff like a clock with like that green glow. Yeah, that's that. Oh, okay So that same year, Sashaki partnered with Dr. George Willis to establish the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation, which was aimed at radium extraction and the production of luminous and paint The next year, the company was renamed the United States Radium Corporation And the mission was the scope of the mission was narrowed to the production and application of the luminescent paint and factories were then opened in Newwark and Orange, New Jersey. So all of a sudden radium is becoming a thing. Now, in the winter of nineteen seventeen, a young girl named Catherine Schaab was like many of the girls who would come to work at US Radium She was intelligent, she was very enthusiastic, and she was driven to achieve great things in her life. Nice. At just fourteen years old. Oh wow She decided to act on a tip about jobs in the paint Alication Dpartment of US Radium. So she quit her job at the department store she was working at, walked into the plant manager's office and convinced that man to hire her. Hell yeah, girl. Which like what a bad ass. At fourteen years old, absolutely. Yeah. Throughout much of the twentieth century factories and manufacturing jobs were Honestly among the most reliable sources of employment for working class Americans of all ages, really, particularly those with poor education or limited specialty skills. Sure Still, the work tended to be like tedious, kind of menial, dangerous. So the jobs were not very coveted. They were just things like, everybody can do this The painting jobs at US Radium, on the other hand, seem to offer something a little more exciting than the typical assembly line job So what Catherine had said was the work was interesting and of a far higher type than the usual factory job. becausecause unlike factory floors, which were like dirty, loud, dangerous, just like Yeah, not where you want to be Vacation rooms at US Radium were referred to as a studio. O Where to Yeah. they really knew how to market these jobs And this was where talented young women with a steady hand in creativity, they worked with an exciting new product called luminescent Paint And at a time when it was being touted as, quote a wonder element, radium and selling for one hundred twenty thousand dollars per gram, which is roughly three million dollars in twenty twenty four. Blink, blink. Yeah blink. The opportunity to work with radium was very thrilling. Absolutely. Ver exciting. veryy like, oh my good, like glamorous even especially those who would never have access to it otherwise And honestly, they got like I think they got something like three times the amount they would get in a normal factory. very well paid And it was just like note and I think they hired a certain, they wanted a certain look for these factory. So they really went for like the whole vibe of this whole thing. This is so interesting. veryy interesting The job was simple enough at its core. Okay. The pre printed paperclock, watch and instrument dials came in and they came in in like a large stack And each girl would work as quickly as they could to apply the luminescent paint to the letters and numbers on the dial, giving them that glow. Yeah that we know. But for girls like Catherine Schab, the girl was the job was so much more than just, you know facing lines on a paper as fast as she could In addition to applying the paint, each dial painter was responsible for mixing her own paint which meant adding a small amount of the radium powder to water and gum adhesive to create the glowing paint. That was marketed as undark Okay, which I'm like Who came up with that name Undark? ' they're like it glows, so it's not dark.ich means you're making dark Undark. like, okay. As they worked though, the radium powder got everywhere. It covered the studio and it covered the painters in a fine coating of what they thought was this fancy in powder That It's rare, it's this wonder element, and I'm covered in it, you know, and it's just like, and it's not dirty, it makes you glow. Yeah. L it's got a luminescence to it. You almost look like you're sparkling. It's like what we would use like highlighter for now. Exactly. It's got that like vibe to it. So I think it had this whole mystique that they were definitely feeding into Now the work of a dial painter wasn't just a matter of chemistry and honestly speed because they wanted them to do it as fast as they could. It also required a little bit of skill and a lot of creativity becausecause the products created by US radium from wristwatches, instrument panels you know clocks for the wall They were really small, theseese little elements that they had to paint And often they have these like tiny little details, but these tiny details were're really critical to their operation and if they were going to be used or not Like for example, the smallest pocket watches that they produce measured just three and a half centimeters across the face. Wow And then like so the Tiny, tiny little like millimeter things they had to paint Yeah. They couldn't just like swipe it over it. They had to like trace the thing. So to ensure accuracy, dial painters worked with Really tiny brushes. They were like camel hair brushes and they had to be capable of doing the finest details So one painter said, I had never seen a brush as fine as that. I would say it possibly had about thirty hairs in it. It was exceptionally fine. Wow. because the consequences of an error could be very costly to the company accuracy and consistency in these little tiny details was very, very, very important The brushes were delicate and slim for sure, as we hear But the bristles would like spread out after a while, like any brush. You know, they just get worn, especially when you're wor quickly,'m sure. Exactly, becausecause you're really doing this as fast as you can That was going to make mistakes happen. So what Sab said was, we put the brushes in our mouths because that was a technique they had made up called lip pointing And it was passed down from the earliest style painters who were themselves hired away from their previous jobs as painters of China dolls. So they they could do those fine details. Lip pointing was when the painter would wet the bristles of the brush with their lips or their tongue. Oh God, pressing those bristles together to make that fine tip Like we would with like a regular brush. you know, like you just to get it really thin. notot covered in radium. No the girls toottally unbeknownst to them, while lip pointing was the standard practice in the U.S It was not that way in Europe In fact, European manufacturers had completely abandoned brushes altogether. because they ended up using like implements that would hold that fine point, so they wouldn't have to do that. Okay. Like glass rods, sharpened sticks, even like metal needles. Always more advanced And it didn't ever cross the girl's mind that putting the brush covered in radioactive material in their mouths could be dangerous because While the dial workers were hard at work in the factory, wealthy and elite people all over the nation were saying how radium is the greatest discovery in the ages, like they used it in glassware and lingerie and toothpastes miracle cures were being made with it. Like Oh my It was being touted as like the fucking cure all. This is going to be the thing that changes everything So why the fuck wouldn't you think it's in toothpaste. Why can't it be in my mouth even though It had literally like in a contained small vial like burned that man. Yeah. that they just didn't release that information? or a lot of this is Why? Yeah One product actually marketed to men at this time was a tonic that they said restored vitality to the elderly, making old men young I don't know about that, baby. So if you can drink it as a tonic. Oh my go. Of course you can quickly put a fucking brush that's been dipped in it on your lips for a second. Why would And from and the thing is They were being told by the people who own these corporations and factories It is completely safe. R Stick it in your mouth. It's fine. Put it on your like whatever you like this radium isn't gonna hurt you. Oh God. They were It's beautiful Look at it. Yeah, look at glows. You're sparkly. So they were like, okay, why wouldn't they believe that? Yeah, no, totally. So from the moment the Cures isolated and extracted radium from uranium, it was apparent the element was dangerous and destructive. Yeah. Like you just mentioned burned a guy's stomach just being in a glass vial in his pocket.. The problem it seems was a matter of communication more than the actual knowledge that everyone had So Georgetown radiation expert, Timothy Jorgensson said, people knew that radioactivity released energy And they didn't see how adding some energy to their bodies could possibly be harmful. Okay. They just weren't. Yeah, science wasn't that advanced. And they just weren't told that like this isn't the kind of energy you want to be adding to your body. Right. Like there's good energy andad energy. Yeah In fact, despite the price of products containing radium, enthusiasm for the products seem to be N ending. I mean, it had like a boundless potential to be everything For example, advertisements for ratithor, a health Tonic, sold the Eixir as a cure for the living dead and perpetual sunshine. And it promised to cure everything from arthritis to gout. Wow. Yeah So it was like the thing And the public's understanding are probably better labeled and Dave said this, which is very true public misunderstanding. It was a catastrophic misunderstanding by the public because of the people on top. peopleople on top were causing this misunderstanding. they wanted to get go. Yeah, exactly The public's misunderstanding of radium seems Prob like we're looking at this today in twenty twenty four goggles being like Oh my God.ike why are you not understanding that radioactivity is bad? But in the early part of the twentieth century, when most people's education stopped after grammar school Scientific knowledge was pretty limited, like you said And as is often the case today, people just keyed in on buzzwords and associated scientific discovery with human progress. and of course, It's going to be unquestionably positive, right? Like we're all progressing Yeah. We're evolving. This is great. technology. And as a result, the public honestly rarely questioned and we've seen this in a few cases They rarely questioned whether products containing radium was safe. And they've done that throughout history've seen. I mean, look at arsenic eaters. There's all kinds of times when they're just being led to believe that this is fine by all these companies pushing these products on people It's easy to go along with the flow and think that you're being told the truth when and not questioning. That's why it's important to question, especially because something has a seemingly desirable outcome. Exactly, That's exactly it. Now, quite the opposite, in fact. they developed a rabid enthusiasm for the fat of consuming radium based products whenever possible. So it really went the other way And in the radium dial factories where the dial painters were in literal constant contact with the powder and paint Enthusiasm for radium was at an all time high. In fact, some of the girls actually liked consuming the small amounts of paint because they liked the way it tasted. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah Apparently tasted good. It's like Pika. Yeah. Yeah, exactly This episode is brought to you by SFi, the all in one finance app where you can bank, borrow, and invest all in one place Let's talk about bank accounts for a second The average bank savings rate is zero point three nine percent in interest. You're earning pennies on your savings, and it doesn't have to be that way. But with SOfI's high yield checkings and savings, the money barely making moves sitting in your savings account can earn over eight times the national average savings rate with eligible direct deposits No account or overdraw fees. We love transparency. You can get your paycheck up to two days early, plus get up to a three hundred dollars welcome bonus when you sign up with eligible direct deposit Sign up for SFI checking and saavings at sofFi dot com slash morbid. 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Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state, coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state Now the problem, of course, was that radium was Literally anything that's safe It was everything unsafe, quite the opposite. And although it did have promising applications in medicine because we are able to harness very unsafe Chemicals. Yeah. when you know, people know how to do that and make them safe, you know, like, but by itself No,. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't as a tonic or other health fad. like they wasn't being safe in those usages Medicine, sure. You're going to figure out a way to make that Tonics Health fads. fucking all that shit, like toothpaste and shit. No We're not getting it right there And by the time World War O was in full swing The radium plants and their dial painters were working overtime to meet growing demand for these clocks, watches, all this stuff Yet at the same time that these young women were inhaling and consuming small amounts of radium, Marie Curie and her husband were beginning to understand the destructive power of the element that they discovered. Oh man. And it was true that radium had the ability, which is I mean, incredible. It has the ability to destroy tumors and other cancerous growths. That's where we get radiation. like that's Of course, we look at it today and we say like be Right, you know. But the more they worked with it, the more they began to recognize that it's power to do that. indiscriminate It was just as likely to destroy healthy cells as it was to destroy health unhealthy. So it's like This is not what we're looking for. We just need to harness it the correct way and we have not. And it's like now the whole world is just like eating this shit up So it wasn't just the Ces who knew it either Founder of US. Radium doctor Sabin Arnold Von Sashaki. had also become Very, very familiar with the destructive power of radium How familiar. Yeah. According to Author Kate Moore, who we will cite the sources in the notes, of course Early in the company's history, radium had actually gotten into Von Sasaki's left index finger And she said, quote, when he realized, he hacked the tip of it off saying it now looked as though an animal had grown had not it This was because accccording to Timothy Jorgginson Radium behaves very much like calcium because the body is accustomed to using calcium to build bone, it will recognize radium as a kind of calcium And so it will absorb the radioactive material into your bone And then it will just begin to decay your bones Because it mistakes it for calcium. so it justakes regenerated thinks it needs to like push it out to the rest of your body to reabsorb. Oh wow. Calcium and that's why it just destroys because it just gets pumped out.'s that's horrifying, but it also that' so fascinating exactly that your body can't tell the difference. Isn't it wild? It the b So yeah, like the body's so smart obviously and like there miraculous things that the body does, but then to to have feeling that dangerous enter your system and to just be like, oh, calcium. Yeah. Like body know, let body know But this is all to say within at least a few years of founding his company, US Radium Von Sushaki knew radium based paint was Highly toxic and extraordinarily dangerous. You just got so boston.raordinarily. I don't know how to say that. Extraordinarily Eraordinarily great. Okay. Eraordinarily dangerous. but that little bit of knowledge from his employees. Oh good. whichich is paint up Yeah say the very, very least. ye In fact, as soon as most painters were introduced to the lip pointing technique most inquired as to whether the paint was, you know, in any way harmful. That was everybody's first question. They're like cool that I do this or not Be that's the thing like It's not that like these girls walked in there and we were just like chemicals sure. I just. L they They asked the people in charge the people who should be telling them whether these things are dangerous. Right. And these people, all their managers would say, go for it. It's completely safe I could completely st knowing how bad it was Now within a few years, many dial painters in the New Jersey factories had actually become like local celebrities. L this was a glamorous. That's so crazy. Isn't that wild? Yes. Because unlike traditional factory workers, like I was saying before, they had kind of a vibe they were going They were young, attractive And those that earned a decent wage were often happy to spend at least some of that money to, you know, look good. They were the latest fashion. So they were they were always looked at as these glamazons that just like work in this st. the studio painting with luminescent paint and they always come out, cover it, you know, like it was like this whole vibe And above all else, it was the radium itself that made these girls instantly recognizable as being radium girls who worked in the factories. Yeah. Because during their hours spent in the studio, like we said before, it was impossible to not get radium dust all over you in your hair, on your clothes. So when they would leave work for the day, they had an unmistakable neon glow So they would walk out of there as the sun's going down and they're glowing Literally. Yeah And a painter, Edna Bowles said when I would go home at night, my clothes clothing would shine in the dark You could see where I was, my hair, my face, the girls shone like the watches did in the dark room So like you just watch this like line of beautiful young girls glowing come out glowing physically, legitimately in every sense of the word glowing. Like that must have been like, of course she want to just like idolize this situation. It just must seem so like otherworldly and it does Y it absolutely does. L Ethereal. Yeah L some of the the young women And girls would wear clothing to work that they wanted to wear to the dance later, like on Fridays. And they would do that so they would get the radium glow on that dress that they wanted to wear and then later at the dance, they would be fucking glowing on the dance floor. So everybody's like whobody's like there that radium girl And it's like they, this was awesome. There was like a But not everyone was as enthusiastic about the job or the effects of working with the paint. Okay. According to Moore, some found the paint made them sick One woman even got sores on her mouth after just a month of working there. And within a few years, even those who loveved their jobs like Catherine Sab, They started to notice that there were certain reactions that they were having trouble explaining. After just a year in the studio, Katherine started getting really bad acne and went to go see a doctor. And at first the doctor was like, oh,, you know, puberty, you're fifteen. So the doctor was like, you know, you're fifteen years old Probably puberty. Yeah But then he ran some simple blood tests just to make sure everything was on the up and up And he noticed some pretty unusual changes that he'd seen in other factory workers. and he said there were ones that had been exposed to high levels of phosphorus. Okay. And as far as Catherine knew, she didn't work with or even near any phosphorus. So the anomalies in the blood were just kind of like, this is purplexant. That's weird. suspicious. Neither Catherine nor any of the other girls knew it they were working in very close proximity to phosphorus and it was beginning to affect them physically. This was part of the whole thing. Right. The symptoms, but they weren't told that.. The symptoms of radiation poisoning were alarming to Katherine and her coworkers, but their minds were then set at ease because Dror Von Sashaki's partner, Dr. George Willis, told them there was nothing to worry about I worry about it. hashing to do with your shut up, stop going to the door't wor about it. Look over here, shut up As Moore pointed out, when one of the greatest radium authorities tells you that there you have no need to worry quite simply, you don't donon't worry. Yeah. Yeah In fact, Willis's reassurances were so comforting that the girls even began to laugh off the increasing frequency of weird occurrences Like they were just kind of like, who, this is so weird. L can't have anything to do with this. Oh God. Inluding painter Grace Friar, who recalled Nasal discharges on my handkerchief used to be luminous in the dark Yeah, so her boogers were shining. Boogers were shining. Oh my go. Sometimes for fun or to make each other laugh, the girls would paint their faces, their nails, and even their teeth with the radiant paint. No Oh my God. Yeah. Now despite their employers' insistence that everything was on the up and up, everything is entirely completely Don't worry about it. it couldn't be safer, could not be safer. The fact remains that many people, painters and ordinary citizens, were continuing to get sick Some like the worker who complained to the mouth sores after her mouth. Yeah showed signs of radiation burns while others had more complicated becausecause radiation burns at least you know, like that that scientist, when you're taken away from the radiation, usually your body can heal itself but others had more complicated problems like bone deterioration. Some girls took their concerns straight to their regular doctors because radiation poisoning and radiation burns were so uncommon. Their symptoms and injuries were like mostly misdiagnosed as other things Others who went to their managers or company doctors were just ignored, or worse They would just the company doctors or managers would just misdiagnose them with sexually transmitted diseases. Are you kidding? Y. to smear the reputations of the women, knowing full well what was actually happening. Yep. And they would do this to smear the reputations of them to discourage them from disclosing their symptoms to anyone else. Because if you are being told by your company doctor, you have a sexually transmitted disease in the nineteen twenties. Oh my God. And youre he's going to be go right ahead, go talk to your doctor about it Like you're not gonna to tell anyone else. you're gonna be you're being shamed at that point. So fucking evil. Yep. And given all the ways that the dial painters were exposed to radium It was dentists who usually heard about the first symptoms because remember a lot of that is going in the mouth area. Beginning in the late nineteen ten s, girls were showing up at their dentist's office with complaints of tooth pain loose teeth Ulcers were showing up And in more extreme cases where the teeth had to be pulled Dental surgeons started noticing the sockets wouldn't heal They would just stay an open wound and not heal And then they would become infected. Right, of course, it's your fucking mouth. And they were like, what the fuck is this? And these symptoms caused by exposure to radium and its tendency to decay bone matter were eventually lumped together into what was informally referred to as radium jaw You can Google Radium Jaw at your own risk Is that horrible? It's just very upsetting. I'm about to So when the war ended in late nineteen eighteen, demand for radium dials decreased dramatic decrease. as did the need for so many dial painters. We didn't need as many. Yeah. Mikey and Ash just looked it up. Oh my go. att the same time had Yeah, that's the one That's the one Uhu. That's the one. Oh just a total jar g on You bothasted the same gasp at the same time. wereere both there you was and I knew you both looked. Yeah. Ag, at your own risk, it's forassic And upsetting. It's so upsetting that people knew how dangerous this was and they were like, yeah, go for it. tonic. Yeah, just stick that brush in your mouth. But yeah, so while there was still a demand for luminescent watches as the war ended in nineteen eighteen that demand was not enough to keep the hundreds of dial painters employed. like there was a lot of dial painters So the companies, including US Radium cut back the workforce. Okay. Still used them though. And many of the painters who were then in their late teens and early twenties chose to quit their jobs and get married and start families This started a second wave of really scary symptoms. Oh now that these girls are saying, well, I want to start a family. Right Even before attempting to get pregnant and have children, many of the painters had noticed that they had very strange changes to their menstrual cycles. Yeah, I would ye. And then when they began trying to get pregnant, they struggled to conceive and eventually learned that they were sterile Oh my Godd, how heartbreaking Yeah And finally, many of the women who were able to conceive somehow were soon absolutely heartbroken by still birth by miscarriages and by quote deformities and body structure of their babies That's soucked. The far reaching consequences of this are astronomical. Truly. The first death came in nineteen twenty two. but only after a long And when I tell you excruciating, I mean excruciatingly painful illness by this person. Oh no. A year earlier, nineteen twenty one in September Former dial painter girl, Molly Maja had visited her dentist and she had to have a tooth removed because she had pain weeks later, however, she was still experiencing pain and That socket had not healed weeks later So she went back to the dentist who just diagnosed her with pyorhea which is an inflammatory disease of the gums. Okay and started treating her for that weeks later, however It got worse and so had her intense lower jaw pain To everyone around her, it was very clear she was in terrible pain as her teeth were literally slowly and visibly rotting in her jaw. Oh God. For no reason at all like that everybody could see But the doctor could not figure out why this was happening. That must have been so terrifying for her to like suddenly start experiencing that and then have your doctor have no phone. No idea No way to stop it You're in intense pain all the time. And you're just this young girl. L so yeah, as far as her dentist, Dr. Joseph Neff could tell He said it was almost like something was attacking her from the inside, but he couldn't tell what whatever was affecting Molly's teeth soon spread to her jaw and caused necrosis Molly's teeth and jaw were literally rotting And in fact, at one point and this is very graphic just so you know And at one point, the dentist literally used his fingers to literally pull pieces of her jaw out because it just crumbled like dust in his hands I ye Oh, like open wounds in her mouth. Oh my God. He just essentially scooped her jaw out with his hands unintentionally, but just crumbled to dust. Feel your jaw like feel how like thick and dense your jaw is. I mean, your mandible is made to crush and to withstand some pressure. Like think about that. you're supposed to be able to like really gnaw down on things and use it as like a And he just scooped it. It just turned back Eactly what it does, it destroys the cells. And then you're just disfigured. Oh yeah But beyond the unbearable physical pain she experienced, the rapid decay of her mouth was accompanied also, and this is just so upsetting, by a very noticeable odor of literal decay Yeah flesh and bone. Think about like you have like a cavity and you go, fuck, I gotta brush my teeth actually. Yes But hers is literally rotting. L's like of her face Yeah, essentially. And then her gums everything. So she had this intense embarrassment that made her not want to be even around people And out of ideas, her dentist visited the radium plant and asked for the ingredients in the compounds, just hoping to clue in on her problem. But the managers at the plant were cooperative and refused to provide any information about the paint to him. That's how you know. pieces of absolute shit, those people And the situation continued to confound her doctor her dentist, Dr. Nef and those with whom he was consulting. he was trying to get anybody to like he stopped at nothing to try to get some answers here. Also just to think that they were like, yeah, no, we're not going to tell you. If this is happening to one girl, this is obviously going to happen to other people too. like you're gonna run into some shit. So you might as well shut down production And just be hon it, like try to save some people. Yeah. like call an L and L. Yeah. So Dr. Neuff said whenever a portion of the affected bone was removed, instead of arresting the course of necrosis, it speeded it up By the fall of nineteen twenty two, Molly's condition had worsened and her entire jaw having largely disintegrated at this point was removed. And they had to remove pieces of her inner ear as well. And then it's like, can you even she probably couldn't even speak anymore? Oh, and it gets worse. Again, I'm going to tell you this gets very, very graphic, even more graphic It was at that time that doctors discovered whatever had affected Molly's teeth and jaw had now spread and was eating away at her throat Oh my go So they were unable to stop this, which is horrifying. because they just once radiation, once it's in there what you can't do anything. Like it's happening. So they weren't able to stop whatever was eating away at Molly at Molly's entire body at this point. And in September, the disease slowly ate its way through her jugular vein Oh my Godd On september twelfth, a little past five PM Molly's jugular vein erupted because it had been eaten away heemorrhaging blood so fast that her sister, who was by her side while she was in bed could do nothing but watch her bleed to death and choke on her own blood It was literally a river of blood pouring from her mouth And she just joked. to death on her own blood. It's literally like something she drowned in her own blood Like that is one of the most horrific things I have ever heard. one hundred percent J just this young girl Yeah, her body just gets eaten by They're all like in their early twenties, sometimes late teens, like they're young Oh my go yeah And her poor family to watch that happen and her doctor, like, obviously you're a doctor. you feel a responsibility to help somebody and this man did everything he could. Yeah. and just couldn't do anything. They just threw up roadblocks to him and let Molly die. And at wayers. Even if they had found out what was causing it, I don't like how can you stop that? Yeah can't You you can't it's just like for you can't 'ause that's the problem. L I had mentioned this before and we were shocked by it how like your body mistakes radium for calcium. So it just keeps going. So because they're very I guess they're chemically very similar. They can be mistaken by the you know your body body. But so when it tries to infuse that radium into the bones like it does with calcium Alpha particles are released by the radium and that infuses into your bones and that's what Those are the kind of things that cause all these awful things like cancer Like many of these girls, many of these young women got like different kind of cancers later in life And they all cause bones to disintegrate and rot and just it spreads like wildfire And you can't stop it really. It's so scary how delicate the human body is And after Molly's funeral, the family spoke to Dr. Nef to try to find out what happened which is when they were informed that although he had kept the diagnosis from her at the time, he hadn't told Molly He said he was diagnosing her with the only thing he knew to do and the only thing that he had been told was the cause of this, which was syphilis. I was thinking you were gonna say that, But she did not because that's what they would do. they would just label it Something like that. Right The company as you can imagine, was the US. Radium was very excited to be able to use that cop out as C It wasn't radium poisoning. it was syphilis and it's not our fault Wrong when they know that wasn't the real cause. No Now. Sould do that to her in death? Yeah are you kidding me? And the worst thing is, it's like they would have like a coroner's jury. at this time where like it was just like laymen on a jury that would like all agree on the cause. you know what I mean? It done. So it's not like doctors or anything exactly, which that does change luckily, but that's good. Now, as Molly was dying in New Jersey, hundreds of girls in Ottawa, Illinois started lining up for what were're promised to be Glamorous jobs as painters at the Radium Dial Company. Like US Radium, the Radium dial compomany produced luminescent clock and watch faces using the same lip pointing technique as the girls in New Jersey. And it's not like we have social media where everyone's going to blast out what the fuck's happening in New Jersey over here.. So now over in Illinois, they have no fucking clue. Oh my God. Yeah. And despite the employments employment ads stated goal of hiring several girls eighteen years or over Many of the painters at Radium Dial were under eighteen, some as young as eleven years old. Oh my God. And do you think what that's gonna to do to an eleven year old? You have no chance? Not that point. none Like the girls at US Radium, the new painters at Radium Dial quickly became, you know, local celebrities in Ottawa, making the job and Making radium. seem very glamorous. According to one local paper, the girls werear the envy of the others in the little Illinois town when they stepped out with their boyfriends at night, their dresses and hats and sometimes even their hands and faces, aglow with the phosphorescence of the luminous paint Like that. like that sounds awesome. Like anybody would be like, holy shit, I want to see for my job. Yeah However, unlike US Radium, product and material waste didn't seem to be a priority at Radium dial. US Radium is shit or was shit Radi radium dial worse, didn't give a shit about how dangerous this substance was Um The girls frequently covered themselves in radium powder, entertained each other with the paint during their lunch hours, and even took Vys home with them here. Yeah Darlene Holm, whose aunt worked at Radium dial, told a reporter, I can remember my family talking about my aunt bringing home the little vials of radium paint They would go into their bedroom with the lights off and paint their fingernails, their eyelids, their lips, and they'd laugh at each other because they glowed in the dark. Right. att home. Like it's just entertainment. And then you think of they're affecting everybody at home too without even knowing it. Yeah Exactly. Now Holm's aunt, Peg Looney, was one of the first girls hired as a painter at Radium dial comppany in twenty twenty twenty twenty twenty nineteen twenty two when they opened And like so many of the others, seventeen year old Peg loved the job, found it so exciting and glamorous. Also, like the others, Peg's boss at Radium Dial told her and all the other painters that the paint was completely safe, not harmful at all the opposite, in fact. she said, quote, They told the girls it would make them beautiful Yeah. So they actually were encouraging it But within a few years, it became clear that they were not being given the correct information Within a few years of taking the job, Peg Looney started having health problems that One would not typically associate with a young woman barely out of her teens. Okay Like many of the other painters, it all started when Peg going to the dentist and having a tooth taken out. Oh no. The procedure was intended to relieve some of the jaw pain that she had been experiencing. In the days and weeks after that, the pain got worse. The extraction sitite still didn't heal Things only got worse from there and soon after her jaw pain became so bad and pieces of teeth and jawbonone started falling out of her mouth regularly. Oh my Godd. Yes Like so many others, Peg's teeth and jaw problems soon spread to other areas of her body. She became anemic, she couldn't walk due to crippling pain. Oh my god Holm said her fiance used to pull her around the neighborhood in a wagon when she was too ill to walk. Oh And this is her in her early twenties Yeah One day in nineteen twenty eight, Peg collapsed at work, and the managers in Radium Dial made sure she was rushed to the company hospital. I bet. In fact, Holmes said my grandparents and her siblings had no say about her going to the company hospital and we were not allowed to visit The fuck. Just the fact that there was company hospitals was even terrifying. Yeah They were told she had diphtheria and was quarantined. What? Peg Looney died in the radium Dial hospital at just twenty four years old. twenty four. and her parents didn't even get to base you this year And according to her niece, the radium dial company insisted that Peg be buried right away and started making preparations. I don't But by then the family was very suspicious that the company might be trying to hide something. So one of them badasses that they are, they intervened and insisted the family be allowed to give Peg a Catholic burial. Yeah. And the company relented and even agreed to allow to have an autopsy performed in the presence of Looney's doctor But when the doctor arrived at the scheduled time They said, oh, the autopsy's already been completed. Oh didn't anything. It was just phtheria. Oh yeah, totally But yeah Lighture. This is so fucking Shady is fuck. 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And keep striving Visit strayer. edu slash Jack Welch MBA to learn more Therayer University is certified to operate in Virginia by Chev and has many campuses, including at twenty one twenty one fifteenth Street North in Arlington, Virginia Cig was just the first of many radium dial painters to become ill with mysterious illnesses And the company just kept attempting to minimize them or cover them up In nineteen twenty five, another painter, Katherine Donoghue also started feeling sick and experiencing incredible pain in her hips. That actually caused a limb And in nineteen thirty one, radium dial fired Donahue because quote, my limping was causing much talk She And she told a report of that in nineteen thirty eight Her story was like so many others. Her pain soon spread. Parts of her jaw started falling out of her fucking head And she eventually became bedridden and unable to walk And the local doctor was unable to diagnose her illness. They just had no idea what was going on., But insisted that she did have some kind of radium poisoning. noody could prove it. That's good though that at least they were like, nope, you definitely do. Exactly. There were several more women with teeth, bone, jaw issues. One women's vertebrae disintegrated from radium incorporation into her bones She just turned to fucking dust in her back and she collapsed Her verte herer vertebrae turnurned Dust in her body. Whf Oh, that's your wholeo ass, spine being compromised Poof. Turning to dust and you'll never ever be the same after that Now back in New Jersey, the deaths of Molli Maja and growing number of illnesses among the dial painters set off a wave of speculation that the cause might be related to the radium paint finally. Yeah A former painter Kenta McDonald said many of the girls I knew and had worked with in the plant began to die off alarmingly fast. And in response, US Radium hired a Harvard trained physiologist consultant in nineteen twenty four to evaluate the situation. Youo know what's happening? Oh yeah, don't worry. they had a plan when his report to management contained incredibly profoundly negative results and dire dire warnings The company just issued a fake positive report under the consultant's name. And they submitted that that hiditting y under that consultant's lengths these motherfuckers were willing to go to to make a quick buck. True pieces of absute garbage And they submitted that to the New Jersey Department of Labor Under that consultant's name, they just li It' like he said that he said it was f., That's not at all what I said Yeah Despite U. S. radiums vast efforts to cover up the dangers posed byiradium in their plants, the consequences were becoming undeniable.. Like they're not going to be able to cover the sn. Everyone is literally dying after they work at your factory or while working out your factory. They're literally disintegrating. Like worers are disintegrating in front of everybody. God. When you actually say that and think about like you're not being hyperbolic, peopleople are disintegrating. They're rotting decaying. Oh my God. In nineteen twenty five, a statistician with the Pidential insurance compompany started documenting the numerous illnesses reported by employees with the company, including the many jaw and teeth infections reported in two dead and twelve living painters A short time later, the county medical examiner, Dr. Harrison Martlin, documented his quote protection of gamma rays from living dial painters and the exhalation of radon from their lungs He took it upon himself, actually, doror Martland. He took it upon himself to help prove that these young women were being poisoned by radium in the paint that they were working with, and that it was the cause of their suffering and eventual deathsow. Dr. Martlin was able to show that radium outside of the body is enough to burn, obviously like we've seen and cause harm, but when ingested into the body, it is so much worse because it will continue to create and give off radiation essentially forever It just keeps destroying the living cells around it. It doesn't allow anything to heal And he said this substance they were told was harmless was now basically punching holes into their bones as they walked around. Nope. And let me tell you, the corporations tried to discredit him, but he was relentless.ood E even getting the coroner's jury system abolished cre a more knowledgeable and credible basis for these women to plead their case in court, eventually Before the year was over, there was another death. This time it was the sister of one of the US Radium dial painters whose sole contact with Radium was sharing a bed with her herer sister Are you serious? Sharing a bed with her and she died. Nothing happened to the sister who was working. She was also going through it. Oh but just sharing a bed with her, she never had direct contact with Race. was enough to. to kill her. Due to the growing number of problems with the staff and the decline in demand for the product, in nineteen twenty six, US Radium ceased production enclosed the plants in New Jersey and moved their entire operation to New York But by then the damage had been done and it was becoming unavoidable. In previous year, former dial painter Grace Freyar was one of those who the medical examiner had detected radiation in and connected to her mysterious illnesses that were cropping up And she wanted answers. She wasn't going to stay. Yeah. Not just for herself, but she said, but for her friends who had become ill and sometimes died. Yeah. Dr. Harrison Martland had confirmed that their illnesses had something to do with their jobs, but whether or not there was any negligence involved was something He couldn't prove by himself, right. Grace, on the other hand had begun to suspect that her bosses at US. Radian had actually known a great deal more than they had let on and were going to great lengths to cover it up.. In fact, when she was first informed that she was sick Grace recalled a day early in her job at the plant where Von Sasashaki explicitly told her not to put the brush in her mouth because it would make her sick. Okay. so for However long, Totally fine. everythingverything's great. Don't worry about it. safe as can be. And then nothing I't do it to you. Stick it in there, it's fine, Bahahah And then right as she gets sick, he's like, you shouldn't put that in your mouth Why has it been fine up until this point, sir And she if he knew there was danger in ingesting the radium dust and paint, why had he allowed it to happen for so long? Right. So a few months later, Grace asked Von Sashaki that very question But aside from ashamedly muttering something about how he'd warned other members of the corporation of the risk He offered no explanation. Wow. So she literally was like, why did you let everybody do that? if you've known that? And he was like Uh I tried to tell them money, I think, but yeah. According to Kate Moore, von Sushaki would later claim that he raised his concerns to the board of directors and management but quote was opposed by members of the corporation who had charge of the personnel no matter what way you shake it out assles Either way all the way a shitty company For years, Grace Friar had been suffering from mysterious illnesses with no cure and would Certainly honestly most certainly die at a very young age because of them. Absolutely. And now after receiving confirmation that the illness was definitely a direct result, not just of negligence, but of outright deceit and abuse on the part of her employer She was fucking piss So over the course of the following year, she started talking with her friends and former coworkers and was like, let's file a fucking lawsuit against this mother fucking Because again, it's not just negligence, it's deceit and abuse. like they did this intentionally The problem was though, that it was unclear whether New Jersey labor laws would cover their damage claims since they had begun so many years earlier Wow. Also, while there was some evidence to suggest the company knew about the risks, they would have to prove that in court, which wasn't going to be super That tough. Regardless of the challenge that was ahead of them, Grace and the others pressed the fuck on. And after two years, they finally found a lawyer that was willing to take on the case. Nice. In may nineteen twenty seven, Grace Friar filed a suit against US Radium. which she was joined with four other former painters, Edna Husman, Katherine Schab K to McDonalds and Albina Laice In their petition, Freyar and the other women asked for one hundred twenty five thousand dollars in damages, which is like nothing considering what they were going to. Exactly. But lawyers on behalf of US Radium argued that the statute of limitations had long expired on their current claim, which was true as the state's law was written.ike dude, you know what you did. You're a huge corporation with, I'm sure, millions of fucking dollars Give these girls some money so that they can literally pay their medical bills. Literally Now Undeterred the now referred to in the press as this is when they got the t the name radium girls. Okay. So the radium girls petitioned the New Jersey Supreme Court to expand the statute of limitation for workplace negligent claims arguing, quote, the harmful effect of radioactive substances on workers may set in from one to eighteen years after exposure to that substance. Wow, it can take that long. So that's why that statute of limitations is bullshit So by the time the court date arrived in january nineteen twenty eight, two of the women had become bedridden Grace was unable to walk and required a back brace in order to sit up She was one of the ones whose like vertebrae had like to integrated disintegrated. And quote, none could raise their arms to even take that oath None of them That's how sick they were. None of them could even raise an arm like this. Oh my God. Under the circumstances, the court date was pushedb to April at which time A number of medical experts and scientists testified on behalf of Freyar and the others, explaining the effects of radiation on the body and how it had caused the specific illnesses in the five women who'd brought the suit. Despite all this and despite the absolute urgency and the fact that two of them are now bedridden and none of them can even raise their hand to take the oath likeike their health is Brail is not even badly deteriorating Lawyers for US. Radium successfully petition to have the case postponed until September You wna know why? because they were hoping these guys Is everybody ready? Nope. You want you I want everyone to hold on for this answer. They wanted to postpone this case to September because quote Several U. S. radium witnesses are vacationing in Europe U checks. So this these women actively dying actively dying and they want to move it Further out So that these fucking pieces of shit can finish vacation vacationing in Europe. We don't want We don't want to mess vacation who profited off All of the work that these girls did and are now suffering from W, wow Wow. Wow. I'm so madad right now Yeah Oh my God, What By then, the case of the Radium Girls had received a lot of national coverage. would the judge's decision to postpone this case was met with public ra Yeah. I mean like yeah. people No problem. I'll wait until you're done with your yaach. No problem. Sounds good. becausecause people the public had started to see these women, the five women as symbolic of the ways in which the working class were being exploited by corporations. Not only that, but people are buying these products. Yeah so they're like they're like see justice here. Right. Given the interest in the story, Frear and the others used the opportunity to plead their case to the public and granted interviews in which they told their story. Good Freyar told a reporter, I have had nineteen operations. But my doctors tell me there is no hope Oh my God. In each interview, Grace gave details about her illness and how the negligence and recklessness of US Radium had affected her life and was going to end her life. She said the worst part of the whole thing is that I don't dare do much with my hands for fear of being scratched The least scratch will not heals because of the radium. So she can't even do anything because she's so worried about getting a tiny scratch because then it won't ever get she's done By late May, three more former painters had joined the suit. Good.az We're now pushing to have the trial moved up, arguing that the plaintiffs might fucking die before the case was called in September. So sorry that you're busy on your fucking European vacation. not My literal life depends on this J Just days later, Vice Chancellor John Bacus ruled that the statute of limitations was not applicable in this case and the suit should be allowed to move forward quickly. Good. He said, my own opinion is that the statute of limitations did not run from the time the girls took this poison into their systems, but from the time of the injury. And in my opinion, the statute of limitation does not apply until the period of injury ends. Great, whichich like hell yeah Bacus' opinion didn't end with his opinions on the statute alone He also addressed the trial delay Rather than continue waiting on the case, which would be likely held to previous standards, Bacist suggested You know what, girlies Why dont you drop this existing case File a new one File that new one that's gonna to be held to the new shit. file another one, drop this. Yeah get out of there. Among other things, a new case would have been aided significantly by the information that had come to light during the review of the Statute of limitations. including the fact that managers at the U. S. Radium Corporation had, quote, in setting up the plea of the statute of limitations, essentially confessed that they had been guilty of the wrongs of which the defendants claimed Yeah real ide. it's just that the time'es run out. And now you can use this. Yeah. becausecause guess what, baby, that statute of limitations doesn't exist anymore, but your statements do Y still let goill there. While the courts and lawyers for both sides fought in court, the victims continued their campaign to keep the story in the press. They wanted people to keep hearing about this A few days after the limitations ruling was made, Katherine Schab made a surprising offer to the doctors and scientists studying the effects of radium poisoning Now Grace Friyar I'll tell you the author, don't offer. don' worry. But Grace Friyar had previously offered she offered her body for study after her death. Wow. She had said, when I die, you can take it a study for radium poisoning But as one doctor put it that we examine her body after death would not do so much for medical science as a living specimen. Okay. They're like, that's great. like wonderfulink Absolutely. It's not going to do what we need it to do essentially And given that, Katherine Schub offered herself as a living specimen. What? tellelling reporters. I am willing with my fullest confidence in the doctors to undergo experiments that may save the other girls. Wow. I just got chillsking. I just got chills. W I have goose bumps all the way up my. My legs have goose bumps even. Catherine Schub. Wow. What what an incredible human Yeah But not even knowing what like whatments could do to her, but if they were going to save one of her friends or somebody who had gone through what she had. Exactly. That's amazing. Now between Bacus' ruling in the statute case and the ongoing and very much intensifying public support of the victims, officials from US Radium saw that the wind was not blowing in their favor here Yeah and the odds were definitely not in their favor. The wind was not blowing through the sails of their European sailboatsactly With just days to go before the start of the new trial, lawyers for US Radium reached out to Grace and the other women with a settlement offer. Yeah, how much? In exchange for dropping the lawsuit, they offered a ten thousand dollars lump sum payment And six hundred dollars a year for the rest of their lives. That I would say suck my dick. Now that like we just, you know, as Ash just said so ellegquly, the settlement was hardly what had been asked for in the lawsuit. Yeah. But given that none of them were likely to live much longer, which is very upsetting All five agreed it would be better to get some resolution than to die with no one being held accountable And to spend like the rest of their lives fighting this Unfortunately understandable. By settling out of court, US Radium had no obligation to take responsibility for or even acknowledge their role in any way In response to the settlement, U. S. Radium's president, Clarence Lee gave a statement to the press in which he said We unfortunately gave work to a great many people who were physically unfit to procure employment in other lines of industry ples and persons similarly incapacitated were engaged What was then considered an act of kindness on our part has been turned against us Are you fucking joshing me bro Jet, be so for real Clarence. be so Clarence fucking for real You got I just hit my microphone with anger. You gotta tell me that Karma got one of these motherfuckers. Clarence, that statement sent me into fucking oblivion. Like We' nice enough to give you a job and you're annoyed because your jaw's falling off Be you're physically unfit to do you? And it's like joking I Oh b Ica's going to get you Now by the mid nineteen thirties, all five of the radium girls had died without hearing a single word of apology from the company who'd taken literally everything from them their lives. Not one Taking breath of an apology. Why motherfucking odta? Yeah. Are you joking? Not one Breath of apology. That makes me so fucking angry. I need to know when they got shut down. I need to know Well, the settlement in the U.S. Radium case turned out to be just the beginning And other suits followed around the country. Good. In Ottawa, Illinois, Katherine Donoghue and several other former painters filed suit against the Radium Dial Company based in Alleates and it's very similar to the one in the New Jersey case And by then, the girls who were once known as local celebrities for their work with radium paint had become known in the press as, quote, the society of the liivving dead And that was given to them that moniker for their like deformities and illnesses That's a quote Wow Like Grace Frear and the painters from US. Radium, Donoghue and the others in Illinois spent years looking for a lawyer to even take on the case before they finally found someone to represent them Ultimately, the women won. But it was at what Kate Moore, who we again, we will cite in the show notes called, quote, great personal cost At the time, Ottawa was you know, kind of like a it's like company town is what it's called, which is a town built around a single company. And few people were reluctant to take on or even question radium dial because a lot of people still rel relied on them for their paycheck their livings And Moore said the town didn't really want to acknowledge what had happened. And there's evidence I've seen in their letters that the radium girls, that like the whistleblowers essentially, that their neighbors, the clergy and business people Kind of shunned them. Wow Cergy. Their fucking church shunn them because they spoke up about like dying r radium That is so ass backward. Like what's a fuck Isn't there a whole bit in the Bible my community and like love thy neighbor me like that they could's love thy corporation bitches. It's love thy neighbor. exactly. I think And even though they won their cases, the awards were relatively small in the end, with the company paying out ten thousand dollars in total to the victims, whichich is probably a nickel as far as the evence is happening For the victims of the radium extraction plants around the country, the legal and financial victories were definitely small and most died truly agonizing deaths in the few years that followed. But still, the truth about radium and the abuses of companies like US Radium and Radium Dial had gotten out. They had They had gotten people to hear these things And without them, nobody would have known In Illinois, Congress passed the Occupational Disease Act as a direct result of Donahghue. and the others taking their story to the public And New Jersey occupational safety standards were changed as a result of the Radium Girls. It was all because of them including a provision requiring all radium dial painters to be provided with complete protective gear. And in nineteen forty nine, Congress passed a bill making occupational disease like those experienced by the dial painters something able to be compensated for and considerably extended the federal statute of limitations employees had to file a claim. Good. All because of them. Wow Despite all that, the country had come to learn about radium in the nineteen twenties and thirties, radium paint was still used in manufacturing as late as nineteen sixties. Shut the fuck up. Albeit with far more safety precautions in place, but still still According to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, the number of people harmed or killed by radium paint is unknown, but quote, it is estimated that over several decades approximately four thousand women around the country worked as dial painters. Now, to this day, places like Orange, New Jersey, and Ottawa, Illinois struggle with the legacy of radium extraction plants like US. Radium and radium dial