Despite the evidence against Radium Dial, no one was in the mood to hold to account one of the few employers left who had not gone bankrupt. apply luminous paint containing radium to watches during World War I, were among the first industrial radiation poisoning victims in the United States. This isnt just an important part of history. By the time the Illinois women tried to file suit, Depression had gripped America. We all should know the stories of these women who suffered through radium poisoning and refused to be silenced. "The chill of fear was so depressing we could scarcely work."īut their employers at Radium Dial even now reassured them that their work was safe, telling the Ottawa women there was no danger because they used a different type of radium. "The girls became wild," remembered one, Catherine Wolfe. For, at last, the dial-painters in Ottawa learnt of the danger. Though these women were persuaded to settle out of court - they had been given only months to live - their lawsuit had major repercussions, not just in New Jersey, where it led to improvements in worker-safety laws, but nationwide. Berry, and it made international headlines. Their case was brought by a young lawyer just out of Harvard, Raymond H. But 800 miles away in Ottawa, Illinois, where a new studio had opened, the painters were unaware of the problems - and their employers did not inform them of the now-established danger. In New Jersey, the women's illnesses had an understandable effect on the profession's popularity: dial-painting declined. The companies were adamant they would accept no responsibility. "I still feel that we have to find the cause," wrote Arthur Roeder, president of the United States Radium Corporation. But the radium firms were making far too much money to allow the fate of a few lowly dial-painters to disrupt business.
This diagnosis should have resulted in the suspension of dial-painting nationwide. Then, in 1925, a pioneering doctor, Harrison Martland, proved the connection between the women's work and their illnesses after discovering that radium had deposited in the women's bones. With radium viewed as a wonder drug, the toxic element was not believed to be at fault. Yet the doctors the women consulted were perplexed.
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