The incidents occurred at three factories in United States: one in Orange, New Jersey, beginning around 1917 one in Ottawa, Illinois, beginning in the early 1920s and one in Waterbury, Connecticut, also in the 1920s.Īfter being told that the paint was harmless, the women in each facility ingested deadly amounts of radium after being instructed to "point" their brushes on their lips in order to give them a fine tip some also painted their fingernails, faces, and teeth with the glowing substance. The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting radium dials – watch dials and hands with self-luminous paint. For other uses, see Radium girl (disambiguation). Kristen Frederick-Frost is a curator in the Division of Medicine and Science.This article is about the factory workers. Our knowledge of its effect on the human body owes much to the female body. For many, that gift of knowledge was unknowingly or unwillingly given.Īs for the sands of time, radium gave years to some and took years from others. In addition, the bodies and breath of these dial painters helped define the allowable limits for radium exposure. The cancers, sicknesses, and deaths of these women shocked the country and helped expose hazards unique to the ingestion of this element. We don’t know if the luminescent material that purportedly filled the ceremonial hourglasses was a composition similar to the radium luminescent paint that dial painters used to fill the demand for clocks, instrument panels, and gunsights that glowed in the dark. Only a year after Curie packed up her hourglass and radium and returned to France, the story of the “ radium girls” hit the papers. When we reflect on the 100th anniversary of the women of America gifting Curie with radium, we should remember that the fear of cancer opened pocketbooks, and it also led women to have their cancers and bodies used as test cases. The knowledge gained from Abbe's work informed the development of radiation therapy, which is still used today (radium, however, is not). We don’t know yet-but all the hourglasses are radioactive.Ībbe's use of a celluloid applicator containing radium to treat a uterine tumor. Perhaps it was a prototype, or perhaps it was an alternate. It has a different design from the others. Our museum has a third one that used to belong to Abbe. Harding.” Curie’s and Harding’s hourglasses now reside at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the American Museum of Science and Energy.
filled with luminous material and at the formal ceremony in Washington, one of these was handed to Madame Curie and the other to Pres. According to the sister of his longtime assistant, Abbe “had two beautifully made hourglasses by Tiffany and Co. Harding gave Curie its key and a small hourglass. Instead of handing the box over at a White House ceremony, President Warren G. A special lead-shielded box was designed to secure and contain it. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, LC-DIG-npcc-04182ĭespite its small size, a gram was a frightful amount of radium, in terms of both safety and cost. Harding at the White House on May 20, 1921.
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