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Glowing radium jaw5/11/2023 ![]() Von Sochocky died at age 45, but the concerns of scientists were muted by companies that profited from the material they suppressed research highlighting the dangers. Before he became ill, von Sochocky grew concerned about lip-pointing and told his employees to stop the practice, but their supervisors contradicted him. There were warnings about the dangers of radium. "The recommended dose was five to seven glasses a day of this radioactive water." Moore goes on to describe how radium users "could feel the sparkles inside their anatomy." "The mayor of Chicago was one who had adopted the craze," she said. Moore says some retailers even sold radium-lined jockstraps and lingerie. "People would use it to treat everything from hay fever to gout to impotence." "People could nip down to their local drugstores, and you could buy radium tablets and pills and radioactive dressings," she said. In an interview with WNIJ, Moore says radium was promoted as safe - even a health aid. Von Sochocky ordered no such protection for his dial painters. Still, he was a student of Marie and Pierre Currie, who discovered radium, and was aware of its dangers he ordered his lab workers to wear lead-lined aprons and to use forceps when holding the material. Occasionally, he would immerse his arm in radium solutions. von Sochocky was known to play with radium, his bare hands holding tubes as he gazed at the substance glowing in the dark. Demand increased sharply, so the inventor of radium paint - Sabin Arnold von Sochocky - opened a second plant in Orange, N.J. entered World War I and the military issued large contracts for radium-painted dials. The girls lucky enough to gain a position felt blessed. They were ranked in the top 5 percent of female wage-earners and on average took home $20 ($370) a week, though the fastest painters could easily earn more, sometimes as much as double, giving the top earners an annual salary of $2,080 (almost $40,000). Some earned more than three times the average factory floor worker some even earned more than their fathers. ![]() According to Moore, the wages were much higher than typical for women:Īlthough the girls weren't salaried - they were paid piecework, for the number of dials they painted, at an average rate of 1.5 cents a watch - the most talented workers could walk away with an astonishing pay package. The first company, Radium Luminous Materials Corporation, opened its studio in Newark, N.J., in February, 1917. Moore writes their small, nimble fingers allowed them to paint with the necessary precision. The workers were almost all young women, according to Kate Moore, author of The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. Fifteen were known to have died from radium exposure each suffered terribly. Lip-pointing continued to be used even after managers began to suspect the practice was harmful.Īs a result, many of these women suffered from anemia, bone fractures, lost teeth and necrosis of the jaw. The girls' supervisors instructed them to use this technique, insisting the material was safe - even healthy. "Lip-pointing," as it was called, led to the women ingesting the radium mixture as they painted. The plaintiff, Catherine Donohue, was one of an estimated four thousand "radium girls" - dial painters who used their mouths to make fine points on small brushes. ![]() The former employee accused the firm of knowingly exposing workers to radium powder, a radioactive material used to make glow-in-the-dark watches and other dials. On that Tuesday, a judge ruled that a woman's slow, painful degeneration resulted from working at the Radium Dial Company plant in Ottawa, Ill. April 5, 1938, is an important day for worker safety advocates.
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