The Radium Girls - UI Podcast #019

You're listening to an Air Wave Media Podcast. Grown-ups, if there's a child in your life who is interested in curious about or fascinated by people in places from history, then my podcast, The Past and the Curious, might just be a hit in your home. From the invention of microscopes to world-traveling dogs to fashions of the 1890s, gold rush ghost towns and audiences going wild for walking competitions, we've got a little bit of it all. This is my children's author and museum educator, Mixe Eleman. That's me. The show is fun, funny, engaging, honest, and beloved by kids and parents alike. Find The Past and the Curious at all the usual podcast places. [Music] Hi, I'm Steve Sultman and you'll sing to a classic episode of the Usus Information Podcast. This story titled The Radium Girls was released on March 3rd of 2009. Since I was a high school science teacher for 30 years, I can tell you I've told this story to my students many, many times. It's really a story as old as time. Something is thought to be a miracle at the time of its discovery, but then it later turns out to be quite detrimental. If you find this story to be interesting, I do encourage you to read one of my favorite books, it's called Pandora's Lab, and it's written by Paul Offit. In it, it discusses seven other stories with similar disastrous outcomes. Now, in a way, this episode marks both a beginning and an end for me. And that's because it was the beginning of year two for the podcast, but it was also the end of the longest break that I've ever taken in the recording of it. And I'd like to tell you that I was on vacation during that nearly six month break, but I really wasn't true. There were just a lot of things going on. I was working two full-time jobs, the recession had just hit and it became a miserable time to be a classroom teacher, and I was doing a lot of repairs to our new home. But I think the main thing that was going on is I was getting burnt out recording the podcast. Keep in mind, it began by releasing one episode per week, but it quickly became clear that pace wasn't sustainable. But I eventually recharged my batteries and I've been at it ever since. So enjoy. Welcome to the Usus Information Podcast, my collection of fascinating two stories from the flip-sytistry. My name is Steve Silman and today's story is on the Radium Girls. But before we do that, let's start with today's question of the day, which has to do with Walmart. Now, whether you love them or hate them, it really doesn't matter, but there's no question that Walmart today is the world's largest retailer. They have more than 7,250 stores worldwide. Yet, there's actually a chain of stores that still in existence today that at one time had nearly twice as many stores. And my question to you is, what is the name of that chain? So in the past, there was a chain of stores that had more than twice as many as Walmart has today. Yet, they're hardly known today. What is the name of that company? Now, I'll let you ponder over that question for a little bit and I'll give you the answer at the end of the podcast. Now today's story on the Radium Girls actually begins in 1896 with the discovery of natural radioactivity in the element uranium. And that was done in France by Henri Becker-Rell. Now this was followed in 1898 by the isolation of two more radioactive elements. And that work was done by Marie and Pierre Curie. She's better known as Madame Curie today. And they called it to elements Pologne, that was named after her native Poland. And the second one, which is actually more important to the story, they discovered radium. And radium, if you can't imagine, was named because it was radioactive. It radiated energy. Now, the Curie's immediately noticed that radium had a very, very unusual property and that was it glowed blue. Now Becker-Rell, going back to him, he experimented with this new radium material and he found that if you took the radium and mixed it with other materials like zinc sulfide, that material would actually glow in the dark. Now I'm sure you can see exactly where the story is going. It didn't take long before a glow in the dark paint was actually developed from this new radium material. And the first man to do so was a guy named William J. Hammer, who just happened to be an associate of Thomas Edison. And he mixed the radium with the zinc sulfide and some paint material and he applied it to watches and clock dials. While Hammer never capitalized on this invention, the wheels were set in motion for an explosion of glow in the dark goods worldwide. Now, the first company produced products with this new glow in the dark paint was called the radium, luminous material corporation, it's tough to say. And they were located in New York, New Jersey. Eventually, they became renamed the US radium corporation. Now there were other companies in the United States, Canada, and you're producing products with this glow in the dark paint. But for this story, only the US radium corporation is key. Now you would think the demand for glow in the dark products would be incredible. It would be great demand for it and they wouldn't be able to keep up with demand. But in reality, demand for the paint was initially small. And that's because the costs to extract the radium from its original rock was very, very costly. It was a complex process. We had to take about one ton of ore to produce.0045 ounces of radium. And that was after treating it with seven tons of chemicals in a 23-step complex process. So it wasn't cheap. But World War I changed everything. It brought about a need for glow in the dark military, instruments, watches, and so on that were needed for the battlefield. All of the factories back in the United States had been producing these glow in the dark products, saw a sudden increase in volume and as a result they hired more and more and more staff. And nearly all of these painters were women and using fine camel hair brushes, they painted glowing paint to the dials of these various devices. But painting those tiny numbers on the faces of watches proved to be the most difficult. Think about how tiny they are. The women were encouraged by the supervise to use their lips to make a fine brush point. You just basically put it up to your lip and smooth out the brush to paint the fine details. And they were assured that the paint was actually harmless even though the factory owners and the factory owners happened to be doctors and the chemist on staff all used protective masks and lead screens when handling the radium-laced paint. So the supervisors told these women that it was totally safe and if you swallowed it there was no big deal. On the other hand, the owners and the chemists involved knew this stuff was very, very, very dangerous. It was radioactive. I probably should point out that this is taking place between 1917 and 1920 when these plants were operating at their maximum capacity. And very little was known about the effects of radioactive exposure at the time and particularly by the general public. There wasn't some information in the literature but nothing that the public really was aware of at that time. You know exactly where the story is going. These women, every time they took one of these brushes and put it to their lips, it was estimated this four or five, six times every clock face or watch face that they painted. This stuff was building up inside their bodies and by the early 1920s the symptoms began to show. Now these women weren't just suffering from aches and pains. They were actually having prounds of their teeth. Their teeth were falling out. Their jaw bones began to decay away. They had joint pain and very, very severe anemia. It was very clear with a very short period of time that all these women got it from exposure to the radioactive material. Now with little in the way of worker protection in the early 20th century, these women really had little means of recourse for the damage that was occurring in their bodies. There was no way to sue a company and get money. These were big powerful corporations who had governmental contracts. There was nothing that they can do. But that all began to change when a woman named Grace Fryer who was a former US radium worker. She only worked there for about three years and then left but she started to notice that she was developing these symptoms. And her case was brought to the attention of a reporter named Walter Lippman and then Lippman managed to get the consumers league, which was a worker's protection organization of time, got them involved with her case. And with their backing, Grace Fryer actually decided to sue US radium in 1925, but she ran it to one big problem. That is no attorney would take on her case. She was going up against the big guys. It took her two years to get an attorney. And the suit was finally filed in May of 1927 on the behalf of Grace Fryer and four other employees in the New Jersey State Supreme Court. Now with the help of Walter Lippman and other reporters around the country, this case grew into a media sensation as being followed by just about everybody in the newspapers. And the five women were quickly dubbed the "Radium Girls" a name that has stuck to this day. And to no one surprise, US radium actually denied knowingly poisoning these women or any other dial painters. They actually launched a campaign of disinformation. And they actually were able to keep, at least for a while, keep the doctors and the dentists and the researchers from releasing any information that they knew. In fact, they even hired a doctor to examine Grace Fryer and said that she was actually healthy even though she had tumors. And was losing her teeth and was having her jaw decaying. It was later learned that he was not a doctor of medicine. But the worst thing that they did was that they attempted to smear the reputation as women by claiming that all of them were suffering from the effects of syphilis. They were trying to ruin their reputation. But there was a lot of documented research data at this point showing that radioactive material was harmful to the body. In fact, the lawyers even were able to get a quote from Marie Curie herself who said that, and this is in quotes, "If the poison is taken internally, it is practically impossible to destroy it." And that's the end of the quote. And you have to realize that Madame Curie, by this point in the late 1920s, knew that she was sick from exposure to radium and other radioactive materials, and she was dying of it. It was very clear that US radium knew that they were going to lose this case, and a trial date was set for June of 1927, but just days before the trial, the case was settled at a court. So what did the women get? Well, each woman was awarded $10,000, which is actually a lot of money in those days, plus complete medical coverage and a $600 annual annuity that was payable until their death. Sounds good deal, but these women could not get their health back. The money wasn't going to take care of that, and death came way too soon to them. For the women actually died within a very short period after the settlement, and they were all in their 30s. Grace Friar, who actually brought this case to trial, she was just 34 when she died in 1933. The fifth woman actually lived to age 51 and died in 1946. Of course, there's all those other workers in the radium factories in New Jersey and across the country and in Canada and so on, that never got any justice and never got any compensation at all for the ills that they suffered. Without a doubt, this is a really, really tragic story, but its legacy still lives on. It actually established the right of an employee to sue their employer for labor abuses. This is something that really did not exist at the time. It also put forward strict industrial standards that are in place today. People complain about OSHA standards and other standards that industries have to abide by, but its cases like this that show why those things need to be in place. Now when it came across a story years ago, I basically had in my head that this would have brought an end to the use of radium in various products, but it turns out it's not true. radium products were still available after this. There were clacks out there, medical clacks who tried to use radium for many, many different things. It had all kinds of claims. I'm just going to read through some of these that I have listed here. There were products that claimed to occur anemia, arthritis, cancer, diabetes, epilepsy, heart disease, high blood pressure, insomnia, obesity, senility, virility. Now this just goes on and on and on. That's probably not even half of what's written here. You could buy drinks, sobs, bath salts, tablets, repositories. You name it. Whatever they could find to put radium in, it was available and supposedly would cure all of your ills. Now clearly we don't have radium in our products today. It's definitely not there. In fact, the dispersal in the use of radium actinematerials is very, very tightly controlled by most governments around the world. So if it wasn't the radium girls that got the radium out of the products, what was it? Well it turns out it's the case of a socialite and golf champion named Eben M. Byers. You see, in 1928 Byers he heard his arm. So what would you do? He went to a doctor and the doctor recommended some treatment. The treatment just happened to be a product called Radathor. And Radathor was a half ounce bottle of distilled water that was laced with the radium. And he took the doctor's orders and he started drinking the radium. That fact he had three bottles of it a day for over two years. But then things started to get really bad for Byers. When I say bad, I mean really, really, really, really, really bad. I'm not even sure that's enough really is in there. Because when I tell you what happened to him, you're going to be really, really shocked. Because in 1930, and this is no surprise, his teeth started to fall out. And that's the classic symptom of radium poisoning. So he went to a doctor who sure enough confirmed that he did in fact have radium poisoning. But eventually, he had to have his upper jaw and most of his lower jaw surgically removed. Think about that. Then whole started to develop in his skull, right? The radioactive material was eating away at the bone in his skull. And it was also determined that all of the remaining bone tissue throughout his entire body was slowly disintegrating. Now, in case you're curious, you really have nothing to worry about with modern glow in the dark paints. They're totally safe. They're made with phosphorescent materials. The pigment actually absorbs light that's when you shine light on it, the energy is absorbed. And then it's released at a later time. There's really nothing in there that will hurt you. On the other hand, radioactive materials just naturally decay and produce energy. And that energy, which is in the form of gamma radiation sometimes, can be deadly. Now radium was actually phased out from the use in clocks and watches in the 1950s. It was actually still used to that point. But there actually are records of it being used to paint the faces of watches until 1968. And even in some clocks until 1978. Pretty scary. Useless, useful, I'll leave that for you to decide. And now for a few words from today's retro sponsor. [MUSIC] >> Dr. Weir's mystery will be continued shortly. >> They're right away, Dr. is mystery or soul pleasure. >> Young man, let's could be more pleasant than mystery. >> Well, music, for instance, that music, why of course? Have you ever heard my painting of chain? >> Dr. I'm afraid you've got me wrong. I mean the kind of music men, home or whistle when they feel on top of the world. And then one of the many things that give you that tip-top feeling is the pleasure of being well-dressed. The perfect taste is the criterion. And in hats is nothing smarter than an atom. From stand to turn, your atom hat gives off that look of quality. Use the quality in the carefully molded shape. And in the richness of the genuine all fur felt. And in the subtle color shape. Next time you guys an atom hat soul or authorize dealer, Strafian, and Cion, and Adam. Once you see and wear an atom hat, you would read that today, as before, Adam is one of America's outstanding hats values. Now, they're good, Dr. Weir. [MUSIC] >> Adam Hatz was actually a big, big name in hats in the 1940s and '50s. And I sponsored lots of radio shows just like this one. This show happened to be the strange, Dr. Weir mystery. But there were many others at the sponsor of the time. Adam Hatz was actually a budget brand that copied the most stylish hats of the day, and then sold them through their chain of stores and through authorized retailers across the United States. The company is actually not in existence anymore. It was bought out. And then one company bought out another and so on until the name was phased out. The name itself is owned by a company called Hatco, which today makes the residual and the sets and hats. But Adam Hatz are no longer being made. And now for a few totally useless yet totally true tidbits from history. It's time for what I like to call news of the weird past. And unlike the stories that I've done in the past, I've actually chosen three that all have the same topic. They are all based on sending high voltage electricity through the human body. Our first little story goes back to August of 1930 where it's reported in Portland, our gun at an engineering show. There was an electric chair on exhibit. And basically any person that sat in this chair would have 150,000 volts of electricity, zap right through their body with no ill effects, all would be noticeable that their hair would stand up on end. Now our second story takes place in January 1932, just two years later. And it's reported a guy named Charles Hawker who was a barber had a chair, that a barber chair that the customers would actually come and sit in and he would shoot 200,000 volts of electricity through their body. And that would make their hair stand up on end. And then he could trim it very, very easily. Somehow I think this guy actually went to the engineering show that I told you about in the first story. And the last little tip of it today goes back to August of 1949 where it's reported that a sermon given by George Speak at the Christian Endeavour Convention actually had him shooting one million volts of electricity out of his body. And I think that that amounts a little high, but he attached electrodes through his fingertips and he delivered a very, very, very electrifying sermon. And now the answer to today's question of the day, and I had mentioned that Walmart currently operates more retail stores worldwide than any other company. Yet there was another company in the past that operated more than twice as many. And I asked what was the name of that company. And if you're old, you probably remember this company. I mentioned this to my students and they had no clue what I was talking about. And it turns out that it's AMP, the great Atlantic and Pacific tea company. In 1930 they operated more than 16,000 retail stores across the United States. Now if you're curious, they are still around and they are a much, much smaller chain. The big supermarkets put their smaller stores out of business over the years and they now only operate 447 stores. That's a big drop from 16,000. Well, I hope you enjoyed today's story and the Radium Girls as well as the question of the day, the RetroSponsor Add, and the little tidbits from the news of a weird past. If you'd like to read more true stories just like this, please be sure to get a copy of one of my books. They're Einstein's Refrigerator and Lindbergh's Artificial Heart. They're available from your local bookseller, online booksells, and of course, your local library. If there's some crazy reason why to contact me, simply drop me an email. at [email protected]. Or you can visit my website at uselessinformation.org. That's one word useless information.org. Now before I close this out, I probably should mention why I haven't done one of these podcasts in a while. And I do want to thank the people who have written to me to ask me to continue doing them. And the real reason has to do with time. I purchased a house over the summer an older house about 100 years old. And it's just been one thing after another. The house is actually in pretty good shape, but it's keeping me fairly busy doing repairs. And it takes quite a while to actually put one of these podcasts together, usually on the order of two to three days to collect everything recorded, spice it together, get the audio level right, and so on. So I thank you for hanging in there and waiting for the next one. I do have another one just about ready to go, so there will be another one after this, and I'll try and do one every two to three weeks if possible. And lastly, I guess I should mention that I'd appreciate again if you could log into iTunes and leave some positive comments because when there are more positive comments, I get more listeners listening to this podcast, and it makes me, of course, want to do more of them. So thanks again for listening, and hopefully you'll tune in the next time. Bye.