At the end of her life, Mollie’s dentists merely lifted her jaw from her mouth to remove it. Severe pain in her limbs also prohibited her from walking.Īlthough dentists didn’t know it at the time, Mollie had developed “radium jaw.” This occupational disease involved necrosis of the upper and lower jawbones, bleeding gums, ulcers, and bone tumors. She first developed increasingly painful toothaches that traveled from tooth to tooth. Mollie Maggia was the first dial painter to fall ill and die. Other symptoms of radium poisoning in the dial painters, which would later become understood as radiation sickness, were sterility, cataracts, leukopenia, eosinophilia, leukemia, anemia, and menstruation issues. In many cases, the tooth extractions wouldn’t heal. There were several instances where, during the tooth extraction, pieces of the woman’s decaying jawbone would come out with the tooth. Many of their female patients complained of stiff and cracking joints, painful toothaches, oozing mouth sores, and listlessness, while others had broken out or developed severe anemia.ĭentists began pulling multiple teeth from young dial painters at a time. Furthermore, America’s obsession with its magical healing properties combined with the available compensation for the work had entire families flocking to the factory for a position.īy the early 1920s, medical professionals throughout the area were noticing a frightening increase in the young worker’s health complaints. Radium’s luminous, sparkling appearance gave them a unique status. These women were called dial painters.įor many dial painters, who were mostly between the ages of 14 and 20, this work was as desirable as it was glamorous. With most of the country’s men on foreign battlefields, the United States Radium Corporation (USRC) in New Jersey began hiring young women to paint a variety of radium-lit instruments for use in the trenches. Thanks to a high-tech, glow-in-the-dark paint called UnDark, which was made with radium, this became possible. There was a sudden demand for instruments and watches that could be read in the dark by U.S. In 1917, the United States entered World War I. The radium cosmetics gave the women’s skin a warm and cheerful glow and came to be known as “liquid sunshine.” This further cemented the idea that the products contained restorative properties that would revitalize the body and improve its overall health. They used these products to combat signs of aging in the form of wrinkles, crows-feet, and even unwanted body or facial hair. Radium-based cosmetics were trendy among women. Radium-infused toothpaste, pillows, facial creams, and tonic water were popular amongst the public, as were radium spas and clinics. It was also thought to improve vitality in the elderly, treat skin conditions like eczema, and cure insomnia.īecause of its seemingly magical healing properties, major corporations began putting radium into their products and heavily promoting its use. Radium was initially considered a cure-all for a variety of health conditions, including arthritis, tuberculosis, rheumatism, gout, and high blood pressure. Before it could be properly studied, this initial use led to an explosion of interest from the American public and a host of false medical claims that radium was “healthful rather than medicinal.” Soon after the Curies discovered radium, medical professionals began using the radioactive substance as a cancer treatment. Radium was discovered by Marie Sklodowska Curie and her husband Pierre Curie in 1898, although it would be more than a decade before the pair had isolated a sample large enough to work with. ![]() It can also form other elements, such as radon. This radiation excites certain fluorescent chemicals in the metal and results in radioluminescence. There are four radium isotopes, all of which are radioactive and have drastically different half-lives.Īs radium decays it releases ionizing radiation in the form of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. In the environment, radium is present at low levels in groundwater, soil, rocks, and plants. Radium is a naturally occurring radioactive metal formed when uranium and thorium decay. It brought to light the dangers of working with radium and created a universal understanding of the need for occupational and radiation safety measures. The plight of the Radium Girls in the 1920s would teach us a great deal about the radioactive element radium and its effect on the human body.
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