![]() They suffered from excruciating bone pain from fractures, crippling anemia as the radiation killed blood-forming cells in their bone marrow, and various cancers. Their teeth fell out, their jaws shattered. Investigators would later measure the radioactivity in the bones of long-dead dial painters to prove that they had been poisoned.Īs the dial painters ingested more and more paint, their skeletons crumbled from within. However, if the material is swallowed, it permanently insinuates itself into the skeleton, where it continues to emit radiation for the rest of the victim’s life, and indeed long after she is dead. The radium they were using emits low-energy radiation, which bounces harmlessly off the skin. The girls entertained themselves by playing with the “harmless” paint, decorating their nails and teeth with the luminous mixture. An instructor once made a show of swallowing some just to prove the point. The women were told that the paint - a mixture of glue, water, and radium powder - was harmless. It was a technique borrowed from the china painting industry.īrush-sucking was probably an unsafe way to hand paint china, but with radium the technique became a death sentence. Instructors at the Ottawa Radium Dial Studio, as the plant was known, taught the girls to “tip” their camel hair brushes between their lips to maintain a fine point. Radium Corporation started making glowing watches in Ottawa in 1922. If all goes according to plan, the monument will be unveiled on April 28, Workers’ Memorial Day. The memorial will be erected on the site of a former dial painting plant, on a plot of land donated by the city. ![]() Piller’s father, William, is a sculptor who has donated most of the labor to make the bronze statue of a young dial painter. Laborers Local Union 393 has contributed $ 7, 000to the project so far. When Piller got back from Peoria, she started raising $ 40, 000 to erect the first monument to the Radium Girls in her home town. The Peoria chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW) awarded Piller its Young Feminist Award in 2007 for her work. The campaign to build a monument in their honor is being spearheaded by Madeline Piller, 17, a local high school senior who became captivated by the story of the “Radium Girls” while working on a play about their story as part of an 8 th grade history project. The main portion of the Site is located in a densely populated, urban residential neighborhood.The town of Ottawa, Ill., is banding together to honor the memories of watch dial painters who were poisoned by a radium paint in the town during the 1920s and 1930s. ![]() "The noncontiguous affected propertiesĪre occupied by residences, light industries, offices, grocery stores, and apartment buildings. "At this time, investigations to identify additional contaminated properties are complete, and the cleanup of contaminated properties is essentially complete," according to the March 2013 document. In the vicinity of the former plant and at various other locations throughout the municipalities of Orange, West Orange, and South Orange." In addition, radium-contaminated soil and debris were identified at approximately 250 noncontiguous properties As a result of those operations, the facility buildings and soil became contaminated with radionuclides. "Approximately 1/2 to 2 tons of ore per day was processed and disposed of on and Radium Corporation facility, which covers 2 acres in the City of Orange, Essex County, New Jersey, is a former radium-processing plant where extraction, production, application, and distribution took place from aboutġ915 through 1926," according to an Environmental Protection Agency fact sheet. It merely means that based on available evidence NIOSH can't rule out such a threat. However, agency officials say, this designation doesn't mean a health threat exists. If NIOSH can't find evidence of either, it lists the siteĪs having a potential for such contamination. ![]() If such a situation is found, the agency looks for evidence that the site was either satisfactorily cleaned up or that the risk of significant residual contamination was low. It looks for evidence that a site engaged in activities that might have exposed workers to harmful amounts of weapons-related radiation. In the atomics-weapons industry, analyzes information about scores of sites around the country. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, as part of a federal program to compensate individuals for health damage from work Source: Report on Residual Radioactive and Beryllium Contamination at Atomic Weapons Employer Facilities and Beryllium Vendor Facilities (Aug. *National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. ![]()
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