As long as there have been factories, there have been workers who have toiled under harsh, dangerous conditions. And even though the situation in much of the world is now better than ever, there are still people who lose their lives at work when profit for factory owners is valued higher than safety.
In 1898, Marie Curie discovered the chemical element radium. She referred to it as “My beautiful radium.”
The newly discovered element was potent enough to destroy human tissue and was decided to be used in the fight against cancer, as well as used for things like fevers, according to The Spectator.
People believed that radium could prolong human life. Radium spas were opened, and radium water was sold as tonic. But these treatments were reserved for the wealthy, as radium was expensive.
Amelia “Mollie” Maggia was just a young woman when she started working in a watch factory that made special glow-in-the-dark watches for the military.
It was the radium that made the watches glow, and Mollie and the other women had to paint the numbers on the dial with radium paint. The numbers had to be done very precisely, and the women were told to use their lips to make the brushes extra sharp. If any of them were concerned, the managers said a little exposure to radium was not dangerous. Additionally, the girls were paid three times as much as other factory workers.
The women working in the factories later became known as the “ghost women.” Their lips and whatever they painted or had paint on glowed in the dark. One girl put radium in her hair to make it sparkle, and Mollie used it to make her teeth brighter.
At the same time, the company owners manufacturing radium went so far as to falsify research to prove that there was no risk to exposure to radium.
However, it wasn’t long before Mollie started suffering from terrible tooth decay.
She visited a dentist, but instead of improving, her teeth began to rot her entire jaw. Eventually, she had no jaw left, and even her hips crumbled shortly after her death.
In Mollie’s autopsy, the coroner wrote to the shock and shame of her family that she had died of syphilis in 1922. It wasn’t until five years later that the family learned the truth when her body was exhumed.
One young woman after another in the United States began to succumb to the terrible effects of radiation.
But the bosses refused to admit that the cause was radium and continued to falsify research.
It wasn’t until a man died in 1925 that a doctor from New Jersey named Harrison Martland began to reveal the truth.
When the bodies were exhumed and examined, there was no doubt about the cause. They still even glowed, the characteristic light of radium.
For years, the factory bosses refused to take responsibility until in 1938 the same bosses were found guilty for the deaths of the young women.
Since this victory, factory conditions have improved in many places around the world. And this is partly due to the tragic fate of the radium women.
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