"Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women" by Kate Moore
Eerie and jaw-dropping… literally.
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There are times when I am reading a book or watching a movie when I think, “Man, I’m so glad I didn’t grow up back then before they realized that basically everything could kill you.” But I look around and still see people smoking cigarettes, vaping, drinking, bathing in the sun, putting a whole cannister of sugar in their coffee - and yes, I’ve been known to do these things as well. In “ Radium Girls”, Kate Moore did a good job throughout the story expressing it isn’t just about knowing that a substance is poisonous, it’s accepting that it is.
This was true for both the employers that hired the dial painters and the dial painters themselves. Obviously, the companies wanted to keep business booming and although they knew they were leading their employees to a slow death by instructing them to use the Lip, dip, paint method, they refused to accept responsibility. It was absolutely heart-breaking to read about women’s teeth and jawbones literally falling out of their mouth due to the radium exposure at their job.
For the women, it was a hard truth to accept as well. Imagine working at one of these glorified positions for a few months, with everyone telling you all the materials are safe. Then a few years later after you’ve had a family, you hear that girls that worked at these factories are starting to die from the radium. You could have been a woman that started experiencing immediate symptoms, or you could have been one that just had a sore ankle for some reason. If it were me, I honestly would be too scared to accept that I may have radium poisoning. I mean, maybe I just twisted my ankle really bad at some point, right? Then a couple months later the pain starts radiating up my leg…. now what? Do I have to accept that I am going to die soon?
For these women, their husbands, families, dentists, and doctors - it took so much will power and courage to first accept this hard truth and then to fight for justice against the companies that were refusing to accept it. This was a story I hadn’t fully understood before, and I’m glad I read it. When a subject is not fully understood by all parties, it is that much harder to resolve (especially when money and human lives are at stake) - it’s incredibly empowering to read about people that overcome this struggle.
| Pub Date: | May 2 2017 | Page Count: | 479 Pages | ISBN: | 9781492649359 |