This week, we'll delve into a cautionary tale: the "Radium Girls." These women were employed to paint glow in the dark numbers on watch faces and dials in the 1920s and 30s using radium paint. Assured that the paint was safe, the girls were instructed to shape their paintbrushes into sharp points with their own lips. But, turns out, ingesting radioactive radium paint isn’t safe at all, and as the women became sick and sicker and died, the companies they worked for chose to gaslight them, refusing to take responsibility all while lining their pockets with profits. But these women fought back, standing up while laying down and their fight set an important precedent we can’t afford to forget. Let’s fix that.
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Sources:
- International Atomic Energy Agency "What is Radiation"
- US Department of Energy "Nuclear Fuel Facts: Uranium"
- Library of Congress Blogs "Radium Girls: Living Dead Women"
- Wikipedia "Radium Girls"
- Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center "Hot Times in 'Radium Hospital'"
- Mariecurie.org "Marie Curie the scientist"
- American Physical Society "Henri Becquerel Discovers Radioactivity"
- Northern Public Radio "Ottawa's 'Radium Girls' At Forefront of Worker Protections"
- Encyclopedia Britannica "Radium Girls: The Women Who Fought For Their Lives in a Killer Workplace"
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