Comment by imzadi
4 days ago
I just read The Radium Girls, about the ̶w̶o̶m̶e̶n children who were hired to paint clock faces and military instruments with radium paint. 100s of young girls who died in their 20s and 30s because they were carelessly exposed to the radiation. It struck me that they were born around the same time as my own grandmother. We really have come a long way in a fairly short amount of time.
You're leaving out the horrific part where they weren't told about the known dangers and we routinely licking/shaping their brushes to get finer points which was a big source of the radium exposure.
I've heard this licking paint brush as a cause of many early deaths. I just don't get it. WTF would you put a paintbrush in your mouth with whatever substance on it? Who does this? How did it start? How is it so common? What is wrong with people!
It's part of shaping the brush to get a fine point often you run it along the back of your other hand to help shape it but I've seen licking it too on occassion.
They would also paint their faces with it, so when they went out at night they would glow. Crazy
I agree with your point, but describing women in their 20s & 30s as "children" is rather demeaning.
Most of the workers were 13 and 14 year old girls. They didn't die until their 20s and 30s.
The way understood it they worked as children then died in their 20s and 30s.