von Sochocky, died himself in 1928 from his exposure to the radioactive material. It’s still unknown how many died from exposure to radiation but it’s clear how many could have been saved. and Canada alone to paint watch faces after the initial success in developing a glow-in-the-dark radioactive paint. At the dawn of the 1920s, an estimated total of 4,000 workers were hired by corporations in the U.S. Radium Corporation hired around 70 women from Essex County, NJ, and by 1927, more than 50 of those women had died as a direct result of radium paint poisoning that was eating their bones from the inside, to put it simply. In their downtime, some even messed about painting their nails, teeth and faces with the luminous paint, marketed under the brand name “UnDark”.īetween 19, the U.S. They were paid the modern equivalent of $0.27 per watch dial, so the harder they worked, unknowingly swallowing deadly amounts of poison each time to make a few extra pennies, the faster death would approach. The women were told that the glow-in-the-dark radioactive paint was harmless, and so they painted 250 dials a day, licking their brushes every few strokes with their lips and tongue to give them a fine point. They were small-town girls from New Jersey who had been hired by a local factory to paint the clock faces of luminous watches, the latest new army gadget used by American soldiers. The Radium Girls were so contaminated that if you stood over their graves today with a Geiger counter, the radiation levels would still cause the needles to jump more than 80 years later.
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