Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings October 2017 - 481

From the Editor

Facts and ideas from anywhere

THE RADIUM GIRLS
The Radium Girls by
Kate Moore is a shocking, heartbreaking, and
tragic story involving a
number of mainly teenage immigrant girls in
Newark and Orange,
New Jersey, and in
Ottawa, Illinois, who
painted watch dials containing radium (1). It describes the consequences
of that radium poisonWilliam C. Roberts, MD.
ing. Kate Moore is a
Sunday Times (London,
UK) best-selling author, book editor, and ghostwriter. In 2015,
she directed a production of These Shining Lights, a play about
the radium girls, and found the dial painters' stories so powerful
that she was inspired to write the above-titled book. Her research
took her to New York, Washington, DC, Newark and Orange,
New Jersey, and Chicago and Ottawa, Illinois. She walked in the
women's footsteps, met their families, and visited their homes
and graves and the sites of the dial-painting "studios." The result
is a magniﬁcent but sad book. Although two previous books (2,
3) had been written on the radium girls' stories, they focused
entirely on the legal and scientiﬁc aspects. Kate Moore's purpose
was to put the radium girls center stage and tell the story from
their perspective.
Marie and Pierre Curie, in 1898, discovered radium. It was
so diﬃcult to extract from its source that only a few grams were
available anywhere in the world. In 1913, Sabin von Sochocky
and George Willis, both physicians, founded in Newark, New
Jersey, the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation (RLMC).
Sochocky had invented the "paint" they used to paint watch dial
numerals and hands with the luminous substance that made
them visible in the dark. Sochocky had studied under the Curies
and understood that radium carried great dangers. The time
he studied with the Curies, Pierre was heard to remark that
"he would not care to trust himself in a room with a kilo of
pure radium, as it would burn all the skin oﬀ his body, destroy
his eyesight and probably kill him." By that time the Curies
Proc (Bayl Univ Med Cent) 2017;30(4):481-490

were intimately familiar with radium's hazards, having suﬀered
many burns themselves. Von Sochocky himself had experienced
the wrath of radium that had inﬁltrated his left index ﬁnger,
and he hacked it oﬀ.
Information on the side eﬀects of radium, however, was
unavailable to the public. Most people believed the eﬀects of
radium were all positive. That is what was reported in magazines
and newspapers around the country. The watch dial painters at
the RLMC plant were all women, mainly teenagers, who were
recent immigrants to the USA. Most had minimal education.
Some started working at the plant immediately after ﬁnishing grammar school. The women for the most part were very
pleased to have the jobs. The girls sat in rows dressed in their
ordinary clothes and painted dials at top speed because they
were paid by the number of dials they painted. Each girl had
a ﬂat wooden tray of dials beside her. (At the time radium was
the most valuable substance on Earth, selling for $120,000 for a
single gram-$2.2 million at today's value.) Each painter mixed
her own paint, dabbling a little radium powder into a small
white crucible, and added a dash of water and a gum arabic
adhesive, a combination that created a greenish-white luminous
paint, called "undark." The ﬁne yellow powder contained only
a minuscule amount of radium mixed with zinc sulﬁde, with
which the radium reacted to give a brilliant glow. The powder
got everywhere. There was radium dust all over the studio. Little
puﬀs of it hovered in the air before settling on the shoulders
or hair of the dial painters. It made the girls themselves glow.
At the time, radium had been considered a magniﬁcent
cure-all, treating not just cancer but hay fever, gout, constipation, anything you could think of. Pharmacists sold radioactive
dressings and pills. There were also radium clinics and spas
for those who could aﬀord them. It was believed that radium
could restore vitality to the elderly. Wealthy customers drank
it as a tonic. Radium water was drunk by the rich and famous,
not by the working-class girls from Newark. It was a bit of a
craze in American life. The element was dubbed "liquid sunshine," and it lit up not just the hospitals and drawing rooms
of America but its theaters, musical halls, grocery stores, and
bookshelves. A song entitled "Radium Dance" became a huge
hit after being in the Broadway musical Piﬀ! Paﬀ! Pouf! On sale
were radium jock straps and lingerie, radium butter, radium
milk, radium toothpaste (guaranteeing a brighter smile with
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