The Radium Girls: The Women Who Were Told Radioactive Paint Was Safe

Young women were hired to paint glowing watch dials with radium. They were taught to shape their brushes with their lips. Years later, their bodies revealed what their employers should have taken far more seriously.

The Glowing Jobs

During and after World War I, thousands of young women worked painting luminous numbers onto watches, clocks and instrument dials.

The paint contained radium.

To create a fine point on their brushes, workers were taught a technique often called lip-pointing—placing the brush between their lips before dipping it back into the paint.

Again.
And again.
And again.

Then the Women Became Sick

Years later, dial painters began developing devastating illnesses.

Their symptoms included tooth loss, anemia, bone deterioration, jaw necrosis, fractures and cancers.

Radium behaves chemically somewhat like calcium, which means the body can deposit it in bone—where radiation can continue damaging surrounding tissue.

Some of the women eventually challenged the companies that had employed them.

They Fought Back

Grace Fryer and other former dial painters pursued legal action against the United States Radium Corporation.

Their fight attracted national attention and helped expose the dangers faced by workers handling radioactive material.

The Radium Girls’ experiences ultimately contributed to greater understanding of radiation hazards and helped drive changes in workplace protections and radiation safety.

And the radioactive legacy lasted far longer than the companies probably imagined.

Decades later, historical company records discovered during environmental cleanup were themselves found to be radioactive and had to be digitized for preservation by the National Archives.

The Radium Girls were not ridiculous.
The way they were treated was.

Sources & References

• NIST — New Jersey’s Radium Girls
• U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission — Radium History
• National Archives — Radium Girls Records
• PubMed — Radium Girls