The Jaw That Exposed the Factory

Name: The Jaw That Exposed the Factory
Genre: Documentary

A dentist, a chemist, and sick former workers begin connecting a horrifying occupational disease to radium.

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Transcript

In 1923, a luminous-dial painter's jaw osteomyelitis was publicly reported.
Mostly women painted radium dials. Luminous paint supplied military dials, signs.
Theodor Blum publicly reported osteomyelitis, adding it to the record.
A New Jersey dentist, Theodor Blum, brought the case into public view.
In January 1923, a written suspicion said radium caused occupational disease.
Radium can enter by inhalation or swallowing and travels especially to bones.
In 1923, former U.S. Radium employees' complaints and suits grew.
Former U.S. Radium employees began tying illnesses to the same workplace exposure.
Radium exposure was linked with jaw necrosis in dial painters.
Research on internal radium contamination's health effects began by the mid-1920s.
In June 1924, Harvard Medical School wrote a report for USRC.
Grace Fryer was among the women named in the famous 1928 settlement.
Grace Fryer was among five women in the famous June 1928 settlement.
To understand that settlement, trace the buildup: cases pushed investigators toward internal contamination.
That theory became central to the case against the company.
The report made internal contamination's health effects harder to dismiss.
Published in 1925, it linked radium exposure with blood changes and jaw necrosis.
Together, those findings made the workers' illnesses harder to dismiss.

The jaw disease had a suspected cause, so U.S. Radium turned to Harvard experts to investigate its own workers.

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