The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore was one of the most inspirational books I’ve ever read (listened to, actually). Detailing the lives and horrible deaths of radium-dial painters in New Jersey and Illinois, the story is one that captivated the world and the courts, and which opened the door for occupational safety standards in workplaces across the United States. The women who waged this battle suffered horrible lives and deaths but did so to help others in similar industries. I admired them greatly and wept copiously during the last chapters of the book.

Radium-dial painting is the act of detailing clocks and aeronautical dials of various sorts with luminous paint, which is made up of radium and water. The girls were encouraged to put the paintbrushes in their mouths to keep them narrow enough to do the meticulous work. That’s right: they were urged to put paintbrushes coated with radioactive ingredients into their mouths.
They died. And before they died their teeth fell out, their gums grew abcesses, their jawbones pierced the skin of their mouths and fell apart. They were troubled with huge sarcomas on every part of their body. Their hips disintegrated until the girls had legs of different length and could walk only with a cane. Their pain turned to agony. They couldn’t eat. They became skeletal versions of their younger, happier selves. It was awful to hear about; I can’t imagine suffering such anguish.

The management of the radium companies were the worst people I’ve ever met in a book, both fictional and real. Snow White’s horrid stepmother was more likeable. (I’m not kidding.) They refused to help the girls that their negligence had murdered. They refused to believe that radium could cause harm. Even when they found out that indeed, radium was poisonous, they didn’t care. They lied and cheated and manipulated as young women lost their lives in direst agony. I have never been as angered by a book.

Despite the deaths, the families left without their daughters, wives, mothers, aunts, the friends left behind to mourn them, the book was a real inspiration. Even though Kate Moore’s writing left something to be desired, and though the narrator was frankly dreadful, the story captivated me. I hope that I can learn to be as brave and as determined as the women I met in this book. May they all rest in peace.

Edit: One of the little clocks in my bedroom has a luminous dial. It used to belong to my grandmother, and passed to me after her death. This little clock that glows at night is old enough that it probably passed through the hands of a radium-dial painter and may even have been one of the clock faces that contributed in a small way to a young woman slowly being poisoned by radium. I will treasure it all the more. ( )

Reasonably well-written and well-researched, if sometimes a bit over sensational in its presentation. Unfortunately, the story is not terribly interesting in its nitty-gritty details. Once you know the basic outline of what happened here, all the ins and outs of what, exactly, happened to each of the girls and how, exactly, the trials played out is a trifle tedious. I'm torn about books like this: I think it's important to tell such stories and to honor the unfair and unjust treatment ordinary folks by doing so, but the reading experience also felt kind of without purpose after a certain point. ( )

The fantastic and heartbreaking story of the women who worked with radium paint and paid the price.it is very well researched and reads like a novel. The author builds sympathy for the characters and then relates the horrifying things that happen to their bodies and the corporate greed that allows it to happen. I sometimes felt the author could have let the story speak for itself more, but all in all an excellent book ( )

This is so tragic and grotesque and the epitome of a capitalist hellscape. The way these women had to fight to their early graves for the companies to take responsibility for their clearly disintegrating bodies boggles the mind. What a strange coincidence that all of the women who worked for us have had their jaw bones fall out, couldn't be us.
I had heard that this was a bit repetitive, and that is certainly true. This could have been much shorter and tighter if we didn't have to relive the trauma of each woman over and over. ( )

The Radium Girls racconta la storia delle cosiddette ragazze del radio, le operaie che subirono un avvelenamento da radiazioni di radio, elemento radioattivo scoperto da Marie Curie e da suo marito nel 1898. Il radio era il componente fondamentale della vernice radioluminescente utilizzata per verniciare i quadranti degli orologi per renderli luminosi: considerate che il grosso delle richieste veniva dall’esercito e che stiamo parlando degli USA e di un’azienda aperta nel 1914 e avrete anche solo una vaga idea del quantitativo di radio maneggiato senza alcuna precauzione da queste ragazze (a volte poco più che bambine).

Senza precauzioni perché, sebbene ci fossero indizi che il radio non fosse poi un elemento così innocuo, questi rimasero circoscritti alla comunità scientifica, mentre il marketing vendeva il radio come una specie di panacea per tutti i mali. D’altronde brillava al buio. Veniva usato per trattare alcuni tumori con successo (o almeno così pareva). Era fantastico.

Nessuna delle operaie venne avvertita di fare perlomeno attenzione.

Lip. Dip. Paint.

Questa è la formula, ripetuta più volte nel libro, che descrive la procedura per dipingere i quadranti. Le operaie mettevano i pennelli in bocca per appuntire i peli dei pennelli, immergevano i pennelli nella vernice e dipingevano i numeri e le lancette. Dite che mettersi in bocca della vernice non era comunque una buona idea? Eh, a farglielo capire a quelli della US Radium Corporation… appuntire il pennello con le labbra era il modo più efficiente per produrre più orologi e per dipingerli con più precisione.

Ricorderò questo libro per il dolore estremo e per la lotta incessante. Lo ricorderò per il dolore perché il radio viene scambiato dal nostro corpo per calcio, al quale chimicamente assomiglia: così il radio si deposita nel tessuto osseo, degradandone il midollo e aumentando la possibilità di indurre mutazioni e quindi cancro alle ossa.

L’ho scritto molte volte, non sono una persona particolarmente empatica, però questo libro mi ha devastato. Non tanto per le descrizioni grafiche di cosa accadeva ai corpi di queste ragazze – Moore è molto esplicita, tenetene conto se questo genere di cose vi impressionano – ma per il racconto del loro dolore, un dolore così estremo e disumano da annichilire.

Ma ricorderò questa storia anche per la lotta delle donne che non si sono arrese davanti alla mancanza di una diagnosi corretta, all’impossibilità di una cura, ai rifiuti degli avvocati che non volevano occuparsi di un caso contro un’industria così popolare e strategica, alle menzogne e ai leccapiedi che le portavano avanti. È grazie alla loro tenacia che il diritto del lavoro ha fatto importanti passi avanti negli USA per la tutela dellз lavoratorз, perché la loro salute venisse prima della capacità produttiva.

That was the tragedy. Radium had been known to be harmful since 1901. Every death since was unnecessary.

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