This might look like an innocuous photo but it hints at a dark, insidious period in American history. This young woman was a radium dial painter. In the early 20th century, radium was used by manufacturing companies to create a glow in the dark paint. Young women, many teenagers and in their 20s, were hired by the thousands to paint the tiny glowing numbers with radium so they would glow in the dark.

 

In order to get the most precise lines, the women were instructed to utilize a practice called lip pointing. The women would place the radium-covered brushes between their lips before painting the strokes. This would be repeated again and again to ensure the brush tip was always pointed.

 

The women had no idea that the element they were using was dangerous. On the contrary, they were told that it was good for them, and radium had been shown to shrink tumours in some patients so the prevailing public opinion was that the element was a wonder drug.

 

It didn’t take long until some of the women began suffering horrific effects from radium poisoning. The element targeted the bones, their teeth would begin to rot inside of their jaw, the girls’ skeletons were disintegrating inside of them. There are reports of women having parts of their jawbones fall out into their mouth, and stories of dentists who with the slightest pressure were able to fully remove a patient’s jawbone. Some women had disfiguring tumours grow on their faces. The pain that these girls suffered is hard to imagine.

 

To make it all the worse, the companies responsible misled the women; when reports came out regarding the harmful effects of radium, the companies went to great lengths to try to discredit the scientists, the characters of the women affected, and to hide medical reports that contradicted their narrative. When I see photos of the dial painters and think of the pain that so many of them suffered, it just makes me so sad. It is awful to think of the human suffering caused as a result of ignorance and willful neglect.

 

It is hard to know the exact number of women who died as a direct result of radium poisoning. There are 112 confirmed deaths but the actual number who died as a result of their exposure is thought to be far higher.

 

-Shelby Cockhill