Radioactive Products

How We Realized Putting Radium in Everything Was Not the Answer – Taylor Orci – The Atlantic

Beginning in the 1910s, the girls instructed to put radium in their mouths didn’t bat an eyelash. They worked for the United States Radium Corporation painting the numbers and hands on watch faces and military instrument panels. Since the work required great detail, the women were told to “point” the small brush head with their lips, thus ingesting a small amount of radium every time. Each woman would repeat this hundreds of times a day. If there was any uneasiness with this process, the good money they got from the job alleviated it. The young women, many fresh out of high school, would playfully paint their nails and teeth with the luminous paint, known as UnDark. About ten years later, these “Radium Girls” would start to die.

How We Realized Putting Radium in Everything Was Not the Answer – Taylor Orci – The Atlantic