Radium: Miracle. Medicine. Poison.Episode 142:16
The Case Files That Still Gave Off Radiation
The physical evidence of the radium era survives in radioactive archives and contaminated ground in Orange, New Jersey.
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Transcript
Original case files were found radioactive—paperwork carrying the past.
In 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium, and the market quickly fell in love.
By 1913, Sabin von Sochocky mixed radium-226 with zinc sulfide to make fluorescent paint.
Alpha particles excited the zinc sulfide, creating a continuous light source.
In WWI, luminous paint supplied dials and signs for military ships and aircraft.
Dial painters were mostly women, and many workers were teenagers when hired.
The Million Person Study later tracked 3,276 past workers and handlers.
The dial is perfect. The danger of radiation exposure was not fully understood during the craze.
January 1923's written suspicion first linked radium to occupational disease.
That year, a public report described jaw osteomyelitis in a young painter.
More former employees began filing complaints and lawsuits in 1923.
The U.S. Radium Corporation faced lawsuits until 1936.
Harvard Medical School's June 1924 report was published in 1925.
It linked radium exposure with blood changes and jaw necrosis in dial painters.
In June 1928, five women reached the case's most famous settlement.
Most dial painters received no compensation from the company.
Elizabeth Hughes told New Jersey's Chancery Court about radium physics, chemistry, measurements.
Hughes gave the court an expert scientific account of radium exposure.
Original paper records in the National Archives' digitized collection proved radioactive.
Documents made the old case physically present long after litigation ended.
Orange was a radium-contaminated site. EPA cleaned it in 2006.
The cleanup removed radioactive contamination from the former industrial site.
The radium dial worker study is part of the Million Person Study.
Where it leaves off
Cleaning Orange removed contaminated ground, but it could not answer what happened across 3,276 lifetimes.
Sources
- The Radium Girls at the National Archives – The Text Messagetext-message.blogs.archives.govsecondary
- Introduction - Radium: Topics in Chronicling America - Research Guides at Library of Congressguides.loc.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
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