What US Radium didn't expect was the media spectacle the case became. Eventually the judge adjourned the case for several months while US Radium summoned witnesses.
All girls were only given months to live by that time so US Radium simply dragged on legal proceedings in the hope the plaintiffs would pass before going to trial. When Grace Frier appeared in court for testimony, she was bed ridden and couldn't even raise her arm to take the oath. He found that nearly the entire workforce exhibited abnormalities in their blood, suggesting a terrifying idea that the company had poisoned everyone there. Not surprisingly, the study conducted by Harvard physiologist Cecil Drinker, returned a positive link between the girls deaths and radium paint. It wouldn't be until 1924 when business began to drop out of paranoia did US Radium finally commission an independent study into the women's deaths. This gave the company ammunition to further deny responsibility. According to her death certificate, Mollie Maggia's death was syphilis. United States Radium Corp vehemently denied any responsibility in the girls' deaths for two solid years. One by one, her co-workers would follow her to the grave under very similar painful conditions. Mollie Maggia became the first confirmed death of a girl to have worked in a radium factory. The poisoning spread to her limbs destroying bones and muscles and finally stricken Mollie to her bed unable to walk.Įventually the disease would claim her life when it ate away at her veins and she bled to death at age 24.
#RADIUM GLOW IN THE DARK SKIN#
Eventually her jaw literally began to fall apart, the bone crumbling into pieces, the muscle and skin around it reduced to a painful, bloody mess.This became known as Radium Jaw as more and more of the girls experience the same horrific condition a few years or even months later. The empty sockets degenerated into painful bleeding ulcers that wouldn't stop oozing. The lick and dab painting technique engrained in her had caused her teeth to fall out, one by one. However, many were now starting to feel the deadly effects of radium poisoning.Ī girl named Mollie Maggia was amongst the first to experience serious health problems from radium poisoning. United States Radium Corporation, renamed, was the industry leader, still employing hundreds of young girls who hand painting those dials. By now the Great War had ended and many of the original radium girls had moved on to other forms of employment or settled down to family life. Today, most glowing watches use a radioactive isotope of hydrogen called tritium (which has a half-life of 12 years) or promethium, a man-made radioactive element with a half-life of around three years.Fast forward to the 1920s. In the past, the radioactive element was radium, which has a half-life of 1600 years.
In these products, the phosphor is mixed with a radioactive element, and the radioactive emissions (see How Nuclear Radiation Works) energize the phosphor continuously. The most common place is on the hands of expensive watches. Occasionally you will see something glowing but it does not need charging. The phosphor is mixed into a plastic and molded to make most glow-in-the-dark stuff. It has a much longer persistence than Zinc Sulfide does. Strontium Aluminate is newer - it's what you see in the "super" glow-in-the-dark toys. Two phosphors that have these properties are Zinc Sulfide and Strontium Aluminate. To make a glow-in-the-dark toy, what you want is a phosphor that is energized by normal light and that has a very long persistence.
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