Within a few years, however, dozens of the women began showing signs of illness. The back of another was luminous almost to the waist.”Īll along, the company assured the women that their work was perfectly safe. One of the girls showed luminous spots on her legs and thighs. Their hair, faces, hands, arms, necks, the dresses, the underclothes, even the corsets of the dial painters were luminous. Harvard physiologist Cecil Drinker, who later investigated the factories, reported, “Dust samples collected in the workroom from various locations and from chairs not used by the workers were all luminous in the dark room. By the end of the day, the women themselves would be glowing from the radioactive paint on their clothes and skin. No safety precautions were taken, and the women were even encouraged to lick their brushes to keep the tip pointed and prevent the paint from drying. The corporation set up its factories in New Jersey and recruited dozens of young women to paint the watch dials. Radium would also receive government contracts during World War I to produce watches and airplane instruments for American soldiers. Advertisements for the product, which they called Undark, boasted of how it was all "made possible by the magic of radium!" U.S. Radium Corporation to manufacture wristwatches with radium-painted dials. His discovery would soon be used by the U.S. Hammer discovered that by mixing the radium with glue and zinc sulfide, he could make glow-in-the-dark paint. Hammer went to Paris and obtained a sample of radium salt crystals from the Curies. It was also widely believed that radium could prevent aging, and companies sold radium toothpaste, radium cosmetics, and even radium water.Īround this time, American inventor William J. Before long, radium was widely considered a “miracle” substance, sold in pharmacies for all kinds of ailments. After it was observed that radium could treat cancer, many people mistakenly thought it could also be used to treat other diseases as well. Radium was particularly intriguing because it glowed in the dark, and as Marie noted, “These gleamings seemed suspended in the darkness stirred us with ever-new emotion and enchantment” (Moore). In 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie, two of the most prominent pioneers in researching radioactivity, discovered the element radium.
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