The “Radium Girls” painted luminous watch dials. They licked the brush tips with their lips to keep them sharp. No one told them the paint was radioactive. The radium accumulated in their bones and rotted their jaws from the inside. This condition was later called “radium jaw.”
In the early 1900s, radium was considered a miracle. It brightened, it healed, it restored youth. Companies added it to chocolate, toothpaste, cosmetics, even water tonic. But radium's most alluring promise was the booming business of making luminous watch dials—and the young girls who painted those dials paid the heaviest price for this “miracle.”
The most famous group was called the “Radium Girls”—hundreds of factory workers in New Jersey and Illinois who painted the numbers on watches and appliances with fine brushes. The paint they used was made by mixing radium powder, zinc sulfide, and a little gum arabic. It was touted as completely "safe." The girls were told to "lip-point" the brush tip by rotating it between their lips to keep it sharp.
With every stroke, every dial, every shift, another dose of radioactive material was injected directly into their bodies.
At the United States Radium Corporation's plant in Orange, New Jersey, scientists handled radium with lead screens, tongs, and safety equipment. But the girls painting the dials had no protection. They dipped, painted, and licked. Little did they know they were swallowing particles that would lodge in their bones and irradiate them from within.
The first symptoms came gradually—toothache, a slight soreness in the jaw, a wound that wouldn't heal. Then the teeth began to fall out. The infection spread. The jaw began to break. One of the first victims, Molly Maggia, began losing her teeth in 1922. When her dentist touched her jaw, the bone remained in his hand. Molly died at just 24—her body riddled with tumors and infections. Doctors initially attributed her death to syphilis, which the family vehemently denied.
The girls' condition later became known as "radium jaw"—a severe bone-causing disease in which radium eats away at bone tissue. Once in the body, radium behaves like calcium. It accumulates in the skeleton and releases alpha particles, which destroy bone marrow, blood vessels, and tissues. The damage was irreparable.
By the mid-1920s, cases continued to rise. Many women sought doctors with complaints of falling jaws, severe anemia, crushed vertebrae, and excruciating bone pain. Many worked at the same plant. Many were told the paint was perfectly safe. Some were even told to paint radium on their nails, teeth, or clothes for fun—and they did so with amusement because it glowed blue-green in the dark.
The factories refused to take responsibility. They blamed the women's "cleanliness," calling them liars, and cast doubt on the initial medical reports. Company doctors falsified the reports. Management hired experts who claimed that small amounts of radium were safe. The lawsuits dragged on—because the companies had money, and the girls were too sick to fight.
The turning point came in 1925, when Dr. Frederick Flynn, a toxicologist working for the company, examined several sick women but refused to provide the results. Then independent researchers intervened—notably Dr. Harrison Martland, the Essex County Medical Examiner. He proved that radium was present in the women's bones and that the radiation emanating from within their bodies could be measured with a Geiger counter.
In 1927, five seriously ill women from Orange—who became known as the "Radium Girls"—filed a historic lawsuit against the company. A settlement was reached in 1928: each woman received $10,000, a small lifetime pension, and medical assistance. Their conditions were so dire that many did not live long enough to receive these benefits. But the case opened a new chapter in worker safety across the country and led to new regulations on industries.
Meanwhile, another Radium Dial Company plant in Ottawa, Illinois, continued to employ girls until the 1930s. Despite the deaths and lawsuits in New Jersey, management maintained that the paint was perfectly safe. Dozens of women met the same painful end. Some died in their teens. Some lived long enough to see the factory continually deny it—until federal investigators finally intervened.
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