Radium: Miracle. Medicine. Poison.Episode 121:31
The Five Women Who Forced a Settlement
Grace Fryer and four fellow painters secure the era's most famous settlement, but most workers receive nothing.
Watch it in the appThis episode needs All Access, from $4.99 a week.
Transcript
Five women were Grace Fryer, Katherine Schaub, Edna Hussman, Albina Larice, and Quinta McDonald.
The radium-dial industry developed a commercial market for luminous-dial watches and other products.
Before the late 1920s, painters used their lips to give brushes a fine point.
Grace Fryer was one of the five women in the 1928 settlement.
In 1923, complaints and lawsuits spread among former United States Radium Corporation employees.
A 1925 Harvard report linked exposure with blood changes and jaw necrosis.
The company faced litigation but never admitted liability for the illnesses.
The case centered on those five women in 1928.
In June 1928, the five reached the era’s most famous settlement.
They received $10,000 and a $600 annuity for life.
Medical expenses were covered, but only after approval by a committee of three doctors.
But the majority of dial painters received no compensation from the company.
The U.S. Radium Corporation faced lawsuits from former dial painters until 1936.
A settlement could close a case without closing the damage.
A stopped clock and closed folder framed the courtroom silence.
Where it leaves off
The settlement closed five claims, not the exposure: radium remained in workers' bodies even as lip-pointing began to disappear.
Sources
- The Radium Girls at the National Archives – The Text Messagetext-message.blogs.archives.govsecondary
- The National Bureau of Standards and the Radium Dial Painters - PMCpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govsecondary
- Radium dial workers: back to the future - PMCpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govsecondary
- US EPA REGION 6nrc.govprimary
The whole series is in the app.
Download on the App StoreAll Access is $4.99 a week, $14.99 a month or $39.99 a year. The annual plan starts with three days free.