12/22/2023 0 Comments Radium poisoning picturesand Canada to paint watch faces with radium. The company had even distributed literature to the medical community describing the “injurious effects” of radium.Īn estimated 4,000 workers were hired by corporations in the U.S. Chemists at the plant used lead screens, masks and tongs. Owners of the company and the scientists in their employ told the women that the radium was safe to work with, while they themselves were well aware of its harmful effects and took extensive precautions to avoid any exposure to it. Their plant in New Jersey employed over a hundred workers, mainly women, to paint radium-lit watch faces and instruments. Radium was a major supplier of radioluminescent watches to the military. Radium Corporation, originally called the Radium Luminous Material Corporation, was engaged in the extraction and purification of radium from carnotite ore to produce luminous paints, which were marketed under the brand name “Undark.” As a defense contractor, U.S. The women, who had been told the paint was harmless, ingested deadly amounts of radium by licking their paintbrushes to sharpen them.įive of the women challenged their employer in a court case that established the right of individual workers who contract occupational diseases to sue their employers.įrom 1917 to 1926, U.S. The Radium Girls were a group of female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with glow-in-the-dark paint at the United States Radium factory in Orange, New Jersey around 1917. Women at work in a US Radium Corporation factory
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |