[Download] 🧡 Mobi The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women (Thorndike Press Large Print Popular and Narrative Nonfiction)

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women (Thorndike Press Large Print Popular and Narrative Nonfiction)

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Review : A full-length account of the struggles of hundreds of women who were exposed to dangerous levels of radium while working factory jobs during World War I describes how they were mislead by their employers and became embroiled in a groundbreaking battle for workers' rights. (general history). Simultaneous. Read more

 

Review : As I begin my review of “The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women” by Kate Moore, it is almost difficult to harness my thoughts in an appropriate fashion. Perhaps to start I will say that this excellent documentary is a magnificent example of synchronicity – the idea that our Universe (or the Creator thereof) manages both Chronos and Kairos – “clock time” and “quantum time” in mysterious and marvelous ways. The story of the women who painted luminous dials with radium paint in the 1920’s and thereafter is of course well-known. I remember my mother, who was an artist (but never a dial-painter) describing the horrific story of the radium poisoning that resulted because these workers had dipped their brushes in the radioactive paint and then “tipped” them with their lips. This was a “cautionary tale” as I began to be interested in painting myself; even non-radioactive paint could be poisonous. Although twirling the brush between the lips was an unsurpassed way of achieving a nice, sharp point, it could be hazardous to your health. Since my mother was beginning her art studies at the same time as the plight of the “Radium Girls” was big in the news, the story was doubtless pivotal for her. Now, a century later, this story is revenant! There are a number of other books recently published on this subject, and of course there is the 2020 movie. As I read this thoroughly annotated and magnificently written documentary, parallels to present-day concerns are glaringly obvious. Radium, recently (in 1902) isolated and studied by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre, was being touted as “the Miracle Element”. In less than 20 years, it was wildly commercialized, being advertised not only as “not dangerous”, but as a “universal cure”. It glowed in the dark, and minuscule amounts mixed with other materials produced a luminous paint that immediately became all the rage for watch and clock dials, as well as being extremely valuable for the “faces” of various scientific instruments. The painters hired to produce these various dials in the factories – called “studios” – in New Jersey and Illinois were universally “girls” – mostly young women in their teens and twenties. They had excellent hand-eye-coordination and could in fact accomplish the delicate painting at an amazing rate. Paid “by the piece”, the emphasis was all on speed, as well as frugality. It turned out that “lip-tipped” brushes were by far the cheapest and most efficient way of applying the paint. Radium is the chemical cousin of Calcium. As such, it turns out to be easily incorporated into bones, teeth, and other organs in the body where calcium uptake occurs. Radium-226, the predominant isotope, has a half-life of 1600 years, and is primarily an alpha-emitter, although other elements in the decay chain emit larger percentages of beta (high speed electrons) or gamma (short wavelength, high energy) electromagnetic radiation. Given this fact, it was assumed that the very slow emission of radiation was not harmful, especially because alpha rays (helium nuclei, very massive particles) are easily blocked by the skin or a sheet of paper. Sadly, as the book so vividly documents, this did not take into account that radium atoms incorporated into bone and other tissue emitted unblocked alpha bombardment directly to the cells themselves. By the time the horrendous damage caused by “eating” the radium became obvious, which of course took several years while the element was consumed in accumulating amounts and then wrought its destruction, the dial companies were raking in the profits. They were prepared neither to impose precautions that might slow production, nor to compensate affected workers in a way that might harm their own “bottom line”. And so, once again, the Hydra-headed monster of corporate greed became the boon of company-supported lawyers and doctors and the bane of the unwitting women who were by then succumbing to the most horrific of illnesses – most specifically, deteriorating, honey-combed bones and raging sarcomas that formed and ruptured with lethal speed. The real thrust of Moore’s documentary is the legal battles which the incredibly brave but tragically doomed women and their families waged, not only for their own survival during strait financial times (once radium poisoning set in, there was no cure, but treatment was extremely costly even if only palliative) but also to protect future workers who might be exploited by the unscrupulous profit-mongering of the “danger deniers” of the radium industry. I do not need to belabor the point about why this is a parable for the present day. The radium industry killed itself along with those who died hideous deaths because of denial, greed, and profiteering. There are present-day corporations rushing down that same path with ever-increasing velocity. It is up to private citizens, the press, and those who still have a conscience in the legal, medical, and business professions to call a halt. In other words, follow the science, not crass capitalism. Believe in cause and effect, and exercise compassion in place of exploitation.