Radiation Exposure

U.S. Radium Corporation (USRC) hired approximately 70 women to perform various tasks including handling radium, while the owners and the scientists familiar with the effects of radium carefully avoided any exposure to it themselves; chemists at the plant used lead screens, masks and tongs. USRC had distributed literature to the medical community describing the "injurious effects" of radium. In spite of this knowledge, a number of similar deaths had occurred by 1925, including the company's chief chemist, Dr. Edwin E. Leman, and several female workers. The similar circumstances of their deaths prompted investigations by Dr. Harrison Martland, County Physician of Newark.

An estimated 4,000 workers were hired by corporations in the U.S. and Canada to paint watch faces with radium. At USRC, each of the painters mixed her own paint in a small crucible, and then used camel hair brushes to apply the glowing paint onto dials. The rate of pay, for painting 250 dials a day, was about a penny and a half per dial (equivalent to $0.317 in 2021). The brushes would lose shape after a few strokes, so the USRC supervisors encouraged their workers to point the brushes with their lips ("lip, dip, paint"), or use their tongues to keep them sharp. Because the true nature of the radium had been kept from them, the Radium Girls painted their nails, teeth, and faces for fun with the deadly paint produced at the factory. Many of the workers became sick; over 50 died from exposure to radiation by 1927.[citation needed] Several are buried in Orange's Rosedale Cemetery.

Radiation Sickness

Dentists were among the first to see numerous problems among dial painters. Dental pain, loose teeth, lesions and ulcers, and the failure of tooth extractions to heal were some of these conditions. Many of the women later began to develop anemia, bone fractures, and necrosis of the jaw, a condition now known as radium jaw. The women also experienced suppression of menstruation, and sterility. It is thought that the X-ray machines used by the medical investigators may have contributed to some of the sickened workers' ill-health by subjecting them to additional radiation. It turned out at least one of the examinations was a ruse, part of a campaign of disinformation started by the defense contractor. U.S. Radium and other watch-dial companies rejected claims that the affected workers were suffering from exposure to radium. For some time, doctors, dentists, and researchers complied with requests from the companies not to release their data.[11]

In 1923, the first dial painter died, and before her death, her jaw fell away from her skull. By 1924, 50 women who had worked at the plant were ill, and a dozen had died. At the urging of the companies, worker deaths were attributed by medical professionals to other causes. Syphilis, a notorious sexually transmitted infection at the time, was often cited in attempts to smear the reputations of the women.[13]

The inventor of radium dial paint, Dr Sabin Arnold von Sochocky, died in November 1928, becoming the 16th known victim of poisoning by radium dial paint. He had gotten sick from radium in his hands, not the jaw, but the circumstances of his death helped the Radium Girls in court.