6/19/2023 0 Comments The Radium Girls by Kate Moore![]() ![]() Their radium-filled bones were being bombarded with radiation from the inside. So all that radium the women licked off of their paintbrushes actually ended up in their bones, like calcium would have. The human body, it turns out, easily mistakes radium for calcium. ![]() Their jaw bones-brittle and degraded-broke at a light touch. Then years later, after they stopped working the factories, the women started getting mysteriously ill. ![]() ![]() These products didn’t actually all contain the expensive and precious element, but the evocation of radium gave them a healthful glow. You could buy radium water, radium face cream, radium toothpaste, and even Radium Brand Creamery Butter. Plus, radium was supposed to be good for you. They were even taught to paint tiny numbers on the dials by licking their paintbrushes to a fine point. The young women had no reason to worry about radium then. The paint got onto their hands, into their hair, and settled on their clothes. During World War I and the years thereafter, dozens of teenage girls and young women worked in radium-dial factories, painting glow-in-the-dark numbers onto watches and airplane instruments. ![]()
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