Radium Girls - The Beginning of US Occupational Safety and Health Legislation

Today I'm not writing a legal case commentary, but rather a history of occupational safety and health. Over the weekend, I learned about the interesting case of the radium girls, which gave the initial impetus to occupational disease laws in the United States.

Before the World War I, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium, a radioactive alkaline earth metal with a half-life of 22 years. In the early days, it was considered almost a miracle cure, and for example, radium needles were implanted in cancerous tumors and the radiation from the needles destroyed the cancer cells. Radium was also used in self-luminous paints, which were especially popular among soldiers during World War I, as they allowed them to coordinate attacks in time, even in the middle of the night, without making a sound.

Radium girls are now known as the women who painted the dials of these self-luminous clocks in the United States in the United States Radium Corporation factories between 1917 and 1926. They were taught a working method that required sharpening the tip of the brush by using the lips or tongue (lip pointing). This method was chosen because it was the fastest to perform compared to other methods of cleaning the brush. The women working in the factory also decorated themselves with toxic radium paint, as the paint made their teeth and lips shine.

When women began to suffer from, among other things, brittle bones, in which the lower jaw was completely destroyed, the matter was investigated and radium was found to be the culprit in several fatal occupational diseases. This also gave rise to the first Occupational Diseases Act in the United States (1949), which stipulated that people be paid compensation for occupational diseases. The case of the Radium Girls can therefore rightly be considered the initial impetus for occupational safety legislation in the United States.

A film has also been made about the Radium Girls, which is currently available on Amazon Prime (for a fee). There are also clips on YouTube that briefly tell the story of the Radium Girls. A book has also been written about the subject, which has also been translated into Finnish. It is definitely worth getting to know this interesting topic and an important milestone in occupational safety in many ways.