Radium Girls: A Case Study

In 1922, young Grace Fryer was drawn to her dentist by a raising concern when her teeth, for no apparent reason, began to loosen and crumble in her mouth. Her jaw was a honeycomb of holes. It did not take long to track Fryer’s mysterious ailment to her employer, the US Radium Corporation, which had employed 4,000 other women to paint dials on watches. Soon after, many other women began to fall ill to the same diseases. This is, the Radium Girls. From 1917 to 1926, the US Radium Corporation in Orange, New Jersey, employed young women, usually just out of high school to paint dials on watches. During World War I, soldiers found that their watches were either too dark to read at night, or bright to the point where they would be seen. Undark Paint, created by William J. Hammer in 1902, provided a perfect solution. Radiation energy found in luminescent particles in the alpha radiation emitted by radium is …show more content…
The toxins of this poison rotted these women from the inside out. Radium is an alpha emitter, and therefore can enter a human body. And in this case, it was swallowing. The women were encouraged to place the paintbrushes in their mouths to give the brushes a fine, strong point, and unknown to the girls, this was radium’s route of exposure. At this time, radium was viewed as a healing solution to almost any problem. The girls did not have to think twice about consuming the paint. Some even put in in their hair, painted their finger and toenails. A few girls even went as far as to painting their mouths to give themselves a Cheshire cat like look. Even without painting their bodies where their work did not demand it, every girl was supposed to paint 235 watches a day. 80% of radium leaves the body through feces but the other 20% accumulates in the bloodstream, and then concentrates in the bone. HOW MUCH RA PER DAY. The amount of radium these women consumed on any given day was