5 stars for The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore.
I read this book because of the word "Radium" in the title. I first read and learn about radium in
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. For the reason that radium is mentioned only in passing for its application to treat cancer in Skloot's book, I find myself drawn to this book which is all about radium and the girls who pay with their lives, and their fight for recompense, for recognition and for justice.
So what is radium?
Radium is a chemical element with symbol Ra and atomic number 88. It is a rare radioactive metal of the alkaline earth series and can be extremely dangerous.
Radium is formed when uranium and thorium break down in the environment. Uranium and thorium are found in small amounts in most rocks and soil.
Radium has a half-life of about 1600 years. As it undergoes radioactive decay, it divides into two parts - one part is called radiation and the other part is called a daughter. The daughter, like radium, is not stable, and it also divides into radiation and another daughter. The dividing of daughters continues until a stable, nonradioactive daughter is formed.
During the decay process, alpha, beta, and gamma radiation are released. Alpha ray can travel only a short distance and cannot travel through your skin. Beta ray can penetrate through your skin, but they cannot go all the way through your body. Gamma radiation can go all the way through your body; this gives radium its medicinal value, being able to travel through the body and be directed at a tumour.
Until the 1960s, radium was a component of the luminous paints used for clock dials, intrument panels in airplanes, military instruments and compasses, and even in many everyday products, including wristwatches, toothpaste and energy drinks. It was thought to have curative properties until its intense radioactivity was found to cause adverse health effects.
It is extremely sad and disturbing to know that the events in the book are real and did happen in the 1920s in Newark and Orange in New Jersey, Ottawa in Illinois and Waterbury in Connecticut, United States of America.
The girls work in a radium dial painting factory that make the first watches with illuminated dials. Following the instructions to keep their paintbrushes well pointed, the all-female dial-painters use the ‘lip, dip, paint routine’ where they put the brush to their lips, dip it in the radium, and painted the dials.
Eventually, the introduction of minute quantities of radioactive substance build up in the bodies of these girls and nearly all died of radium poisoning. The book describes in horrendous details the pains and sufferings these women have to endure as their bodies slowly disintegrate and make them the living dead. Due to industrial occupational hazards, none of them are able to lead normal lives.
There is also the riveting courtroom drama that keeps me at the edge of my seat as I read on how these young innocent women stand up for what is right, even as their world fall apart, how they fight on when all hope seems gone, how they inspire one another to defend against attack or criticism, and finally, how they lead other dial-painters to come forward through their friendship networks.
On top of the hopeless situation of radium poisoning due to no cure, there is also plenty of anger to go around as I read about the notoriously dishonest United States Radium Corporation (USRC). The USRC is a vivid example of the ways of an inconceivably selfish capitalist system which cares nothing about the lives of its workers, but seeks only to guard its profits and interests.
The story of The Radium Girls has now been told, their voices heard. If you have yet to read this book, it is never too late to pick one up and be transported to the Roaring Twenties to understand what it means to be a dial-painter, to be one of the glowing girls who leave behind an extraordinary legacy.
