The Story of the Radium Girls | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
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- Опубліковано 31 лип 2024
- "On the 20th of April, 1902, after years of hard work, Marie and Pierre Curie successfully isolated a brand new element: radium..."
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Intro
00:45 - The Golden Age Of Radium
02:09 - The Work Of Dial Painters
04:50 - What Went Wrong?
08:32 - The Legacy Of Radium
MUSIC:
► "Glass Pond" by Public Memory
► "Underwater Exploration" by Godmode
#Documentary #History #TrueStories
You didn't even mention that during a dental examination the dentist accidentally pulled one girl's entire jawbone out of her gums... That's how rotted her bones were. Other girls had to testify in court from their death beds, wheeled into the courtroom. Their legs broke as they walked. It was as if their skeletons were made of Styrofoam. Many developed such deforming tumors on their face they were unrecognizable. And it took decades of fighting for the company to even admit it did anything wrong.
That sounds like it was embellished... a lot, which is probably why he didn't mention it
Man, that is disturbing.
I was concerned we were going to see a tumor riddled face. It's a tragic and horrific sight.
@@TheSuperQuail there are actually photos of many of these gruesome things. he's always been very respectful of cases, and doesn't go toward the shock factor- which is the more likely reason he showed none of those images.
What's the source for the jawbone sliding out and the legs breaking on their way into court?
I can totally forgive companies for mistakenly thinking that it was safe, given the prevailing wisdom, but I can't forgive the slurring and dismissal of victims. To write that one girl off as having died of syphillis was a really nasty stain on character.
But by the point they had the girls painting watches the execs and scientists in charge refused to go near the stuff without hazmat protection!
The people in charge DID know! They just didnt care!
The founder of Radium Dial told one of the defendants not to put the brush in her mouth because "it's dangerous". Key chemists were having their fingers amputated because of the radioactivity. Lawyers with the corporation were trying to put up court delays to wait out the defendants dying. Everyone in the business knew, they just flagrantly didn't care.
@@sarabachmann2837 Oh wow, that's despicable.
This case is why big pharm today have liability clauses that they can't be sued if anyone dies from taking their experimental medicine. Slimy scumbags.
Still going on today with people having adverse reactions to medications
It’s really upsetting that many of these girls’ concerns were passed off as having syphilis. At that time it was a common disease among sex workers (which as we all know were not highly looked upon then or now), so the employers were essentially calling the girls whores or sluts so they didn’t have to admit to any wrong doing.
Deplorable behaviour of the employer and how convenient to blame syphilis as the cause of death and ruining the girls' reputation. Were autopsies done in those days?
Nothing has changed, except for the number of readily available diagnoses. Currently, women's medical concerns are regularly dismissed, often with no attempt at an explanation at all. For many women, if there isn't a clearly definable (or outright visible) link between obvious cause and obvious illness, they'll be told to suck it up and stop being so dramatic. Sometimes in those exact words, but usually by intentionally useless testing or just blatantly doing nothing.
At least back then, the only existing diagnosis for "turns tissues into swiss cheese" was syphilis, even if they'd never seen syphilis do THAT before. They should have taken it seriously, should have tried, but at least they couldn't just google it.
That’s exactly what I thought instantly.
I know. Honestly, I suspect that it would have been identified and addressed sooner if they hadn't been women.
@@adde9506 You're not kidding, I've experienced this myself. About nine years ago, I woke up one day in excruciating pelvic pain. Went to the ER, where the doctor ordered an ultrasound. The doctor looked at the images, and said it's just an ovarian cyst, you'll be fine, and he discharged me. Even though I was in excruciating pain. Long story short, and a few specialist doctors later, it turned out that it was actually a big, benign ovarian tumor. Like, how could that ER doctor miss a huge tumor? Anyway, in case you're wondering, a month later, a surgeon at a different hospital removed the problem ovary. And, in case you're wondering some more, yes, you do have normal monthly periods with just one ovary. :)
The Curie's bodies are still highly radioactive to this day. Their caskets are lined with lead to keep the radium in. They were pioneers of technological advancement, but it came with an ugly, painful price.
Such is the downside of being a pioneer in one's field - the keyword there being 'pioneer'. Remember what happened to the ones on the Oregon Trail? It's a similar principle, right down to the fatal diarrhea.
Wow, I never knew that...
Even Marie Curie's cookbooks have to be kept in a lead lined box
I knew I'd heard about some of the people involved had radioactive graves, but I couldn't remember if it was the scientists or some of the Radium girls.
@@Nikki0417 both
The practice of licking/sucking on paint brushes has actually lead many art historians to believe several of the old Renaissance masters actually died of cancer. It was common practice for artists to suck on their brushes to clean them, and of course nobody knew back then that the pigments in many paints - cadmium in particular - were carcinogenic.
Even today many artists still stick their brushes in their mouths (after they're thoroughly clean!!) to shape the bristles with their saliva because it dries stiff, helping the brushes to hold their shape between uses.
(Yes I know this is my third comment on this video but I figure it will help FH with engagement for the algorithm!)
And even now some artists still don't know the risks of it, specially with cadmium. Thankfully, synthetic versions are becoming more available.
That's exactly how I shape my brushes after cleaning.
It might take a couple seconds more, but maybe it's wise to spit on your fingers and shape the brush with them, just in case? But maybe the brush is clean enough for it not to matter. And maybe touching it with your hands is as harmful as putting it in your mouth. Someone enlighten me please
Interesting information. Comment away.
@@yesterdaydream If you paint frequently, using gloves and staying in a ventilated area is recommended. But touching paint occasionally is not as harmful. Long term exposure is the main issue.
Nothing shouts corporate evil louder than dismissing their ailment by shaming them with syphilis.
When they probably had it themselves.
@@emilyjones7724 I don’t think that will hold up in court or just an argument like at all either
You probably support "vaccine" mandates.
@@charleslindbergh8222 Elliot sorry to inform you but your brain doesn’t work
@@theeoddments960 "trust big pharma, they have a spotless record and have no incentive to lie" eat lead
“Stalling in the hopes that the dial painters would die before they could win” is absolutely terrifying, something straight out of a comic book villain
Is still a favored tactic of lawyers...
To be fair, the business was likely falling apart at that point, what with the newspaper articles.
Absolutely the defendants playbook in asbestos related disease cases ( mesothelioma) where prognosis is very poor.
Why is the worst thing you could possibly think of or something you could relate to from this experience is a comic book villain? That’s so bad lmao “hey 9/11 reminds me of that one anime I watched real sad stuff”
That's capitalism for you. It's no different today at all.
When I was young, I used to imagine I could go back in time to stop these things from happening. I’m old enough now that I realize that I would just be viewed as a raving lunatic running around screaming the sky is falling and would be locked away in an asylum. Ah, the fantasies of youth. Our safety regulations were won through blood and suffering.
Truth, though. It was a Twilight Zone episode in the 60s...
And most of these things, they KNEW damned well...asbestos? Yeah, they knew since the 1800s. Armstrong put the sh*t in flooring into the mid 1980s. I have an email where they admitted it.
Radiation is another one they knew about pretty early on. Edison was a complete a**hole for torturing animals to scare people (he wanted everyone tp go DC electrical current, but it's stupid and impractical for home use-tons and tons of wiring, for one), but the fluoroscope he had made it pretty evident damn fast that is was REALLY a bad thing to play with.
His assistant got into it and lost fingers, hands and arms that just rotted away until he died horribly.
Guess what? You would see powerful floroscopes in shoe stores as part of a scam/bull to sell shoes into the 1960s! They could easily have been damaged just being moved around. Nuking the hell out of the kid, the mother and the sales guy, all at once.
For those who want more details about the Radium Girls' stories, I strongly recommend The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore. Just keep in mind that it is an extremely dark and HEAVY book, so take plenty of breaks for your mental health. The story in full is so incredibly heart wrenching.
Thanks for the recommendation & warning! 💚
thank you !
Thanks, I would like to read that.
I actually couldn't bear to finish reading that book - it was just too horrible
I've read it and can vouch for your description.
My grandmother lived in Deptford, South London, and her neighbor was horribly disfigured by radium and never left the house, her daughters and neighbors doing everything for her. She was a watch dial painter, although I have no idea where that may have taken place - Im not sure if watch painting was done in the UK at that time. Her husband, a good friend of my grandfather, was killed in WWI so I assume she worked in the UK but there are no details available.
The woman wore a veil at all times and would not open the door to anyone so it was left unlocked so that the neighbors could drop things off for her, but she would only speak to them through the door of her room. Her daughters said that her bottom jaw was mostly missing and she had trouble breathing much of the time. Despite this she was in her 70's when she died and the whole street turned out for her funeral.
It’s my understanding that radium dial painting went on longer in the UK than it did in the US. So that poor woman might’ve had that job after she was widowed or she could have had it during the war (which was common as all planes back then had radium painted dials in them and most servicemen had radium pocket watches).
(Also, I know very little of England, but it appears there was a radium painting factory in Limehouse in London? It’s the only one I can get an exact location on, though I’m sure there were more. But if the East End seems likely, maybe she worked there?)
@@Annie_Annie__ Thanks Annie. That could well have been the place, but just knowing that those places existed is helpful, and if there was one in Limehouse its entirely possible that there was one closer to her. I believe that she was working while her husband was at war (he and my grandfather were part of the teams that used the big horse drawn artillery) but of course he never came home. The details are unfortunately lost to time without some serious detective work, but its good to have a little more of the puzzle.
While Iv heard about the "Radium Girls", it has always been in relation to the US, and Iv never really heard about it in the UK. I somehow doubt that they would have gained much support here either, although their treatment would have been free. The area was very poor, with old cobbled streets and tiny, tiny little narrow houses where the front door opened onto the street and the back yard was just big enough for the outside loo (this is back in about 1965). I doubt that anyone there could have afforded private health care even if it had been thing back then.
Yep the UK when on until the late 60s unfortunately
@@colleenkerr4237 That's unfortunate that they had this as well as Thalidomide. That people HAD to have known about...
Yeah pain is no joke it can ruin your existence
My grandma was a Radium Girl in my hometown of Ottawa, Illinois. It’s so sad how many women died and NO ONE took responsibility. 😭
There's a museum in Utica that has a section dedicated to the radium girls. I wasnt aware of any of this until i saw the display
Wait, there’s a town called Ottawa in America? Defak?
@@georgy2596 since 1853, 2 years before Canada changed the name of Bytown to Ottawa
O k
wait so was she pregnant as a radium girl or this was after she had your parent?
You told this story with dignity and grace. As horrifying as each woman's experience was, you actually skipped the horror (details not needed) and went straight to the heart of the matter. Nicely done.
That's what I like about this - it tells the story, and thankfully skips the gory bits
The details absolutely are necessary. This is a horror channel dingus.
i watch these true crime channels mostly for those gory details, morbid curiosity is a helluva drug
@@DavidB-rx3km
Why is it good he skips it?
@@troytellsit493 If you think horror requires details to be horror, then you're simply boring. I don't make the rules.
Horror can come in many forms. For a lot of us, horror is in the subtlety of it. An example of a subtle tragedy/horror would be this common one: "Baby shoes for sale - Never worn."
I remember as a child in the 60's being fascinated with a machine in our local shoe shop that could show a real-time image of your feet inside your shoes to see how they fit. But shortly after the first and only time I tried it they stopped using the machine and eventually took it away. Of course the problem was that it was using a continuous high intensity beam of X-rays that was nicely irradiating your feet. But it was as late as the 60's before they figured out that irradiating childrens' feet probably wasn't such a good idea...
My brother died of leukemia in 1950. aged 9. It was suggested that the use of those machines in shoe stores might have contributed. Not saying it was so, but who knows??
That's fascinating. I can't imagine having something like that in a shop. Thanks for sharing.
Omg the stories of the past..! It makes me feel a little more secure about our present
I remember my folks telling me about that machine. Imagine all along the easiest and best way to measure where your toes were in the shoe was a thumb!
@@sacphilip makes me feel like we've always been shit, and probably always will b lol. Your optimism is charming
"We don't want to take responsibility for our actions that result in killing people, so we'll dig in our heels and take every delay, and hopefully they'll die before the case is settled, posthumously proving their point."
jokes on them, eventually their business would be shut down regardless because noone's gonna use such a deadly, deadly thing en mass for ANYTHING
@@sarafontanini7051 It won’t have an effect on them one bit. It will have an affect on the workers. The higher ups will just move on to their next folly. In America, where CEO’s - and their ilk are so ingrained with the politicians, they would just get a slap on the hand - if anything.
In a country where politicians haven’t lost their morals, and still work for the people, the CEO’s would get jail time - if they don’t commit suicide for dishonoring their family.
@@sarafontanini7051 yet the world has been conned... BRIBED even... into taking experimental gene therapy. Without even the question of why the manufacturer has no liability...
I am so, so, so ashamed and embarrassed to know that my great-great-grandfather was one of those higher ups! The more I learn about the Radium Girls, the more Ashamed I feel. How can anyone just… not care? His actions basically said he didn’t care about feminine lives, though he worked with the Curies. (We have a diary of my great-grandmother’s, with several entries mentioning the Curies and how Marie would teach her about radium)
@@sarafontanini7051 Sure they are...
Just for starters: cigarettes. Then tons of dumb people just jump on the e-cig bandwagon with ZERO knowledge of what it does long term. I mean, smoking is nasty, but at least we know what it does and when. You don't see any 18 year olds with lung cancer from it...but there were quite a few hurt for the new thing they told you to go buy...it doesn't take much to scam and manipulate people.
So, let's see...cars. Cars dangerous. Bicycles, even more so. Ladders. Power tools (but stairs are much more dangerous than either elevators or escalators by a long shot)...the list goes on and on.
People buy stuff that can easily kill them all the time.
Here's another: if you buy any synthetic fabric and it gets a spark on it, it'll go up like it was soaked in gasoline. They have warnings on them now. No kidding.
Makes you wonder in another hundred years, what will people think “I can’t believe they did that” will be for us
"take the jab". We are seeing it realtime.
Not vaccinating and dying to own the libs
Facebook and the like.
@@drdrayfromla99 70% of those dead were obese. You didn't tell them to lose weight.
99% survival rate. Getting paranoid and sucking up to government restrictions to own the conservatives
@@blacktigerpaw1 r/HermanCainAward
My grandmother knew some of these girls. She lived in Montclair, NJ. When the girls started getting sick she told friends it must have something to do with that factory. People told her she was nuts. Guess she wasn't crazy after all.
It's always the 'crazy ones ' speaking facts
@@sidology1.0 aileen wuornos
@@sidology1.0Not always...
It amazes me sometimes that the human race has survived as long as it has
It won't be long now...
Give it a minute.
Just enough knowledge to he dangerous.
100%
Well, there are a lot of us
that is really messed up "waiting for the victims to die so the company wouldn't get sued" yep totally human and not a sociopath at all.
corporate psychopathy is real
I remember hearing about this story. They even said one of the main owners of the company who started to understand the dangers of radium due to his own use of it, told the girls to stop pointing the brushes with their lips. The girl asked her foreman what the owner said and he told her it was perfectly fine and not to worry instead.
The most disgusting part about this case for me was how long the companies essentially gaslit their workers. They hired just this random guy to pose to be a physician and tell all these women they were being hysterical and there was absolutely nothing wrong with them. All the while their teeth were falling out and tumors were growing out of their bones.
When they exhumed the first woman (the one mentioned in the video) to take a bone sample and test it for radium, her corpse was glowing!!!
It’s truly horrifying to read about and the Afterword of the book Radium Girls by Kate Moore makes me furious any time I think about it.
Why did they need to test it for radium?
Has gaslighting suddenly become a more popular term? I don’t think I’ve heard of it until the past year or two and now I see it all over the place.
@@TheJingles007 to prove that the job was actually what was making these women sick.
@@emmettlover11 I guess I should rephrase.. how long after her death did they exhume her?
@@sstills951 in fact it is a very old term. A film from 1944 coined the term to a popular use
This will never not be sad, the assumption that it was seen as healthy and the unknown effects were deadly, all too similar to the Goiania incident
Or daily life
Exactly why we should scrutinize everything to a logical extent. Including vaccines. Lets keep in mind these same regulating authorities and "experts" once told us that cigarettes were healthy and somehow didnt know that Oxycontin (synthetic heroin) was extremely addicting, leading to the death and suffering of millions.
Covid 19 vaccine?
@@williamdraken6018 or science has come a long way since the 1900s and the covid vaccine was meticulously tested before being distributed to the public, and any common misconceptions that arise with vaccines are proved Inaccurate with basic scientific reasoning
@@williamdraken6018 and I've lost people to cigarettes, they're completely different things, and yes various opioids used to be considered healthy and are addicting but science has also come a long way since that
I can't imagine the pain those girls must have felt to have such brittle jaws. It must have been so easy to accidentally break them when they become so brittle
A simple bitch slap could completely shatter a young girls grill. It's sad
@@bonkosuckacocka983 why the heck would you say such a thing
@@WouldntULikeToKnow. oh heavens. It's a joke idiot lol. It's very sad and serious that a lack of knowledge pertaining to radioactive materials back in these times caused this horrible mouth piece problem.
@@bonkosuckacocka983 real funny
@@theeoddments960 see I knew someone would get it
This story reminds me of the horrible *”Phossy jaw disease”* _{phosphorus necrosis of the jaw!}_ suffered by workers of the 18th-19th century matchstick industry. 🥺😔
Why did they suffer from it?
@@Cosmic-Bear. phosphorus
It reminded me of that too. Both had their symptoms downplayed and essentially gaslit by the factories.
That was what led Joseph Knef as well as a few people to investigate the Dial painter’s jaws when they complained of tooth and jaw pain. In fact, Phossy Jaw was the first suspect to the rotting jaw.
My favorite part about these videos is reading the plethora of comments teaching me something new about literally anything and everything. You go, UA-cam Comment Scholars. Y'all have taught me way more than I would've ever learned in school in the span of a few comments.
Hmmn, that is a disturbing statement on several levels...don't reveal it to anyone that is important to you.
@@crankychris2 I think it's a pretty common known fact that the American school system is pretty fundamentally broken and public schools are a joke in terms of meaningful education.
So my comment really shouldn't be all that surprising, especially to American viewers.
@@crankychris2 especially talking about teenage weirdos on the internet as “UA-cam scholars” your priorities are wack if you think this would be useful in everyday life and that school is useless meanwhile most young peoples aspirations is to be a professional rapper or to be the manager of a fast food restaurant lmao
@@theeoddments960 My dude. I'm a Registered Behavioral Technician. I can say without a shadow of a doubt that 1. The American public school system values quantity over quality in terms of curriculum and lacks a cohesive foundation when it comes to what should and shouldn't be taught in school. The Age of Information didn't get its name for nothing. Sure, relying on a few articles and comments on the internet is probably a really misguided way to gain any sort of knowledge but that doesn't negate the usefulness and the abundance of factual and more importantly, DETAILED information on niche topics. The way I see it, if you can keep an eye out for misinformation, fact check your sources, and keep a critical but open mind, the internet can be a goldmine of knowledge. We have access to more information than we have before, obviously with a few hiccups threatening to censor and mediate in favor of biased opinions.
And if you somehow mistook my "UA-cam Scholars" as literal, I'd say you might need to tone it back a bit and hone in on your context clues and reading comprehension... Just saying.
And on top of that, I think you misunderstood me. I don't think school is useless. I think under the right circumstances, going to school and pursuing a higher education is the best way to succeed. But the curriculum could use a lot of work. The illiteracy rate in some states is staggeringly high despite the fact that almost every American child is made to attend public schooling (begging the question of why some of us can read well beyond a 5th grade level but others can't) meanwhile more resources are being put into the "high marks" schools. There's not enough emphasis being put on the importance of learning life skills and preparing students for their financial future. I think knowing how to balance a checkbook and when to check for your credit score is a bit more important than learning the difference between toward and towards. And the massive holes they leave out in social studies and history classes is almost malicious. It's sugarcoated and packaged in a neat "happy ending" nationalist bias. The gritty stuff is always left out unless to demonize another part of the world that *isn't* America. You don't hear about the oftentimes dubious agendas of our past political leaders or the pushback against the movements that paved the way for people's rights. That's why I am grateful that there are people out there far more knowledgeable than I could ever be about the cracks in the glossied up history of my country. They make it to where this information is not only readily available to read online, but that it doesn't come in a single perspective. I would've never learned about the Radium Girls and their contributions for the recognition of worker's rights in school. I had to parse through UA-cam, find a niche horror historical channel, and learn about it for myself with the added benefit of being able to read further up on it and the testimonials people have to offer in the comments.
I always feel so sad when I hear about the radium girls, it's so scary that people were killing themselves with a substance they thought was supposedly good for your health.
Yes imagine. Now pop out and get your covid jab.
@@martinholmes1493 Alright, gonna buy some fentanyl from your dealer, be right back
It was hidden from these people so that they people in charge of radium could make money.
@@martinholmes1493 Really? You're going to compare a vaccine to literal radium? That's quite a stretch for someone so inflexible. Did you know we'd all have polio and chicken pox and be dying of influenza in much larger numbers if it weren't vaccines? Go back to fox news where you belong.
@@nathanielcraig3588 did you know in the US vaccines are required to be tested and short term and long term effects are to be recorded and that the manufacturers are responsible for informing you of those risks? Unless of course, it’s an unvetted vax under emergency approval.
Don’t compare 60+ years of childhood vaccines to a mass produced, first time ever, experimental vaccine. Now, put your mask back up because you’re apparently still contagious with with your Fauci ouchie.
The issue of Radium and Cancer were not picked up in the UK. We still had women in factories using it in the 1960s.
I was given an Ingersoll pocket watch for Christmas and that had a Radium dials. You could even get paint for plastic models.
My brother had a plastic skeleton which he painted in glow in the dark paint as it was called.
You could hang the skeleton up in your bedroom and at night it would glow in the dark.
I’m American and my dad had a travel alarm clock that had numbers and hands that glowed in the dark. He got it in a 2nd-hand shop in England in the 1970s when he was in the Navy. Anything like that in the States would have been WWI-era, whereas this clock was made in the 50s or 60s.
I remember being amazed with it because when we were kids in the 90s, anything glow-in-the-dark had to be “charged” with sunlight and would only glow for a few minutes. But dad’s little clock would glow all the time no matter what.
It wasn’t until I read a book about the Radium Girls (when I was about 32) that I put it together exactly *why* dad’s clock glowed so brightly all the time without needing to be ‘charged’ with sunlight.
Are you sure that was radium? There are plenty of non-toxic, non-radioactive glow-in-the-dark pigments that have been available for many decades now.
@@TheWiseSalmon Yes it was a big scandal just like asbestos.
Spookiest, scariest skeleton I've ever heard of.
SERIOUSLY!?
Like, I know news didn't travel as fast back then, but that's a lot of time between 1928 and the 60s. I'm surprised no one said anything for so long over there. Like Annie said, any American watch like that would bet WWI-era.
This is what people forget or ignore when they talk about "the good old days".
There is a reason laws have to be in place to protect workers from shady practices.
Tobacco companies knew the dangers of smoking and its relation to cancer, but misled the public for years about it being healthy to smoke.
When I was really little in the 60s, I once used a shoe-fitting fluoroscope to make sure my shoes fit. It's a loosey-goosey radiation machine that focused radiation at your feet, while leaking radiation everywhere. No protective gear at all. That one time, it ended up burning my feet a bit, so my parents wouldn't have me do that anymore.
Haven't had any health issues yet, but that doesn't mean I'm out of the woods.
Well, it's been 60 years. The asbestos/lead in your old house or in the air from your brake pads and such will probably get you first :) lol
Radiation is usually like a roll of the dice; it's about how it mutates your cells. Some mutations are totally innocuous, while others are deadly. This is why increased exposure results in increased odds of a poor outcome
Always scares me how recent it was that we had little to no scientific knowledge of these things!
Science has advanced so much in such a short space of time.
Ignorance played a big part in a lot of things years ago.
Do you recognise that your statement could also apply and have been used during the early 1900s? Scientifically, we’re in a constant state of discovery. Makes you wonder what scientific breakthroughs of this age we can expect to see debunked in the future, though typically science only concedes it was wrong when malpractice claims are involved
Bet they thought they were so advanced back then compared to a hundred years before as well.
@@katesteventon5296 oh definitely, but if you tie in how fast technology has developed in the last half a century compared to the rest of humanity, I believe they go hand in hand.
I work in a hospital. In the oncology building there are some historical photos on the wall showing how early cancer treatment was delivered. One shows a group of people holding blocks of radioactive material in their bare hands against different parts of their faces and bodies. That was radiation therapy back in the day. Now there are multi million dollar machines and teams of nuclear medical specialists who calculate the exact amount of radiation and the exact point to apply it to for each individual patient. Science has come a long way, but it had to start somewhere. 50 years from now they'll probably look back at what we do today and wonder at how little we know.
There’s a great article in one of the earlier issues of Weird NJ about how irradiated the land still is in the area where the Radium Girls worked and what a nightmare living in the area was. Pets dying, weird illness, nothing would grow, constantly having to be relocated so the EPA could strip the soil which didn’t do anything - eventually the writer & his family decided “F it, we’ll eat the cost & move, it’s not worth all this”. Not sure if it’s archived on the website but definitely worth a read if you find it. Radiation never just goes away.
Well, on High St, just down from the street from one of their sites there sits the Star Tavern. It is objectively the best pizza on planet earth, NJ. I wonder if it’s the radioactivity?
@@jerseythedog Perhaps it’s created Super Pizza like in comics. Just like it curiously gave one of the Radium Girls an incredibly long life, only just dying in 2015. Maybe it does give certain people powers and the original health scam artists of the olden says were onto something, seeing farther than most mere mortals eyes could fathom.
@@douglasbubbletrousers4763 Mind = Blown 🤯
Almost every state in the US has radioactive materials stored underground. It's really a mess.
radiation goes away.. but on its own time, which is typically much longer than a human life
For those who don't know, tritium, another radioactive element that is also used in thermonuclear weapons, is used today in items that need a continuous glow, such as night sights for guns. Thankfully, it emits little damaging radiation and is generally considered safe while emitting visible light for up to 30 years. Interesting stuff.
"Crushed-up fireflies and glow-worms"... my dad said... No? Yeah probably not, now I think about it.
Fun fact: tritium is also the ideal fuel for nuclear fusion reactors. A stable supply may be the key to achieving economical fusion energy.
Tritium is also an isotope of hydrogen with 2 neutrons which is why it can be used as an energy source
PRECIOUS TRITIUM
Reminds me of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire. That also resulted in many of the worker protections we enjoy in the US today. I’d love to see Fascinating Horror do that story as well, if he hasn’t already.
He has! I found and watched his entire channel in one sitting when it had about 30 vids and it's one of those.
There is a video on the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire on this channel, but it cannot be watched anymore due to age restrictions; UA-cam wants to have a copy of my ID or something like that nowadays, which they most definitely will not get.
@@VideoDotGoogleDotCom what! News to me. I didn't get the age restricted warning when I watched it
@@samuelhenry8366 Yeah, it's some new feature. I'm no longer able to watch any age restricted videos, and I've been on UA-cam since the days of video.google.com (which was UA-cam's predecessor and 10 times better).
It unnerves me everytime I hear this story again and again. It just never becomes less shocking
These girls are often cited on occupational hygiene courses for contamination at work by radioactive substances. Saving future generations from something similar has been their legacy through the years.
Man this story was horrific. There’s a few good docs out there about it, pretty disturbing. Feel terrible for these women, and anyone who’s suffered radiation poisoning. It’s absolutely horrific.
I was researching for a historical novel set in 1878 and another similiar thing is phossie jaw girls working in match factories got because back then matches were made with white phosperous. Same thing. They had to strike and sue. Now it's the less dangerous red phosperous on the strip we strike a match against on the match book or box to keep levels as low as possible and the match head is sulpher. Match heads used to be white, not red, and could be struck on anything and often ignited themselves. I went down that rabbit hole and didn't come back up for a whle. Bad as things seem today, we really have improved.
Interesting how something glowing in the dark used to actually be seen as "must be healthy!" And now if you see something mysterious glowing in the dark you genuinely know but to touch it
Always let everyone else go first on any new crap. It's served me well up to now. Lol. Old, cheap drugs. That's where I'm at. No Oxycontin.
wish this were true. too many stories where this isnt the case
Many glow in the dark things today are totally safe.
Thank you for always ending these videos with some positivity near the end. Hearing that the girls sickness was used to research radiation which possibly saved the lives of others warmed my heart. Have a nice day.
There was a factory in my hometown of Ottawa, Illinois. HBO did a special on it once. I remember in High School 1977 one building that once was a factory, then a meat packing company and even a High School was torn down. The walls of the building ticked with a Geiger counter. After the building was torn down, including the foundation, the demolition company dug out the earth down to six feet. Everything was sent to a nuclear waste dump site. There is a statue dedicated to the ladies that once worked in the factory.
Huh, interesting coincidence. I commented a little while ago on the Goiania video, referencing this exact incident. I'd seen quite a few comments calling the Brazilians involved in that outbreak of radiation poisoning "stupid" for recklessly handling materials that were obviously dangerous. The point of my comment was not to criticize them too harshly, because they weren't afforded the same knowledge of the effects of radiation as most of us in the US and Europe had at the time. There was a time when we were equally ignorant about radioactive materials-- and sadly, that ignorance came at a terrible cost for these women.
"I can see how healthy you look, you're positively glowing!"
Alex Jackson oh you stop it!
You’re radiating
Hahaha, these jokes 😱🤣
@@lizardlady4011 No disrespect meant to the poor women who suffered, was a dark humour jab meant to alleviate the stressors of hearing about people suffering.
@@cadillacdeville5828 Many more could be made indeed. 😏
I just read the book "Radium Girls" by Kate Moore and it's an incredible book with lots of fascinating details. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning more. The story captivated me so much, so glad you made a vid about it!!
The story of the Radium Girls is just heart-wrenching! Worse than that is… my great-great-grandfather oversaw a chapter of dial painters. He once invited the Curies over for dinner (I have that dining table now, actually) And I’m genuinely ashamed to know that I’m related to someone who did not care for the lives of his employees.
His place of work is now a super-fund site, and far too radioactive to actually see. And it will remain that way for… millennia
Oh wow that's crazy! Was he in Ottawa or in New Jersey?
@@livelovedaydream I’m not entirely sure. I suspect New Jersey.
Though it’d be almost funny to have yet another tie to Ontario!
My dad’s parents were from towns along Lake Ontario
I think about the Radium Girls often: Absolutely heartbreaking story, and one that makes my blood boil at the same time. I really liked that final note about how employees can, "in theory," expect accountability from their employers. Because as you've shown in many of your other videos... For some companies and institutions, it's still just a theory. Great work as usual!
All the contemporary ads and newspieces really helped paint the picture of the carefree atmosphere around radium at the time.
A fascitating and haunting cautionary tale as always.
If there’s anything that radium and lead have taught me, it’s that, if people in the past used it for everything, it’s probably best not to use it in _anything._
EDIT: Other people have mentioned arsenic, asbestos, and mercury. Also good examples.
the fact that i used to chew the lead of pencils in primary school really unnerves me now ngl
EDIT: ok i got more responses than anticipated and i forgot that pencils r now graphite bc we always used to refer to them as lead lmao soz
@@juliak7088 how do you chew the lead part? I knew kids who chewed the wooden pencil part with the lead center. They always told them not to do it. I never did it, yuck. Remember when we were little my mother always said the only thing that goes into your mouth is food and only food I give you.. I think that probably really stuck with me, LOL
@@juliak7088 unless you went to school in like 1880 it’ll be graphite not lead
@@shononoyeetus8866 then why are the called “#2 Lead Pencils”?
False advertisement????
@@SaltyAndSassy Because people a *long* time ago thought graphite was a form of lead, and the name just stuck.
It basically means "#2 'core' pencil"
Amazing video. You might also want to do one about Eben Byers, an athlete from the same era who was prescribed Radithor (radium infused sparkling water) as a treatment for a sore arm. Byers was initially convinced it was helping and started consuming bottles of Radithor daily and after a year of that, his skull dissolved.
This is why I'm never first in line for anything and I never buy into what's being pushed (car leases over buying, the newest drug, bitcoin)
You should check out Mr. Ballen on UA-cam. He covers the story of Eben Byers under Magic Exilir. A famous picture of him without his jawbone shows up.
His skull... Dissolved? How does that even work?
MrBallen has a very good UA-cam video on him.
His jaw, not his skull
This story never ceases to anger and disgust me.
Just finished watching Shrouded Hands' video on another radiation horror story... Truly one of the most horrifying 'advancements' of humankind.
Ooh the one where they find the canisters of radioactive material in the woods! Gruesome!
I just watched that one too. Underrated youtuber
I want to see the Tri State Crematory where he dumped 336+ bodies just anywhere.
I love getting educated on my 3am lunch break. I'm always so horrified that it keeps me awake for the rest of my shift at work. 😅
My mom was one of these Radium Girls, but she only worked there a short time. Fortunately she never got cancer or any of the other horrific results of this. I remember her telling me about it, and she even had two of the Westclox clocks that she had worked on with the glow-in-the-dark watch hands and dots where each number was.
I work in an Air Force museum, and we have many artefacts in our navigation cabinets that are considered radioactive due to what you described in the video. We get annual radiation level checks just to make sure everything is within safety levels, and we limit our time working with specific artefacts because they're still giving off energy 75+ years later. Nothing dangerous, but one should definitely use caution.
The half-life of radium is about 1400 years. It's not significantly lower now than it was 100 years ago. Still, handling those artifacts is not the same thing as using the paint all day and licking the brush.
@@rudra62 Yeah touching dried paint once in a while is a little different from ingesting it on the daily.
The glow made scientists think it had magical properties✨- me when I was a little kid😋🦄✨
Same Scientist believed in magic but scoffed religion lol
Everything with glitter just ✨ hit different ✨
@@sofialima4521 or everything that glowed/had an interesting colour
@@xXspottyXx that too 😅
@@sofialima4521 yep
There was a similar case in London years earlier with white phosphorus used in matches. The Bryant & May match factory in East London employed mainly women and children. In 1888 the women went on strike after the poor conditions and ill health. The problem was solved when red phosphorus became widely available.
IIRC the book (many have referenced) mentions that case.
Seeing this makes it even more amazing to me that my grandfather worked as an undergraduate research assistant under Hermann Joseph Muller, the man who won a Noble Prize for discovering radiation mutates genes! Such important work he contributed to. Miss you GP 💞
I was literally shaking my head at every thing that was said. Makes you wonder what chemicals or substances we use today that we have no understanding of
cough - cough - Like certain things Big Pharma has entirely been let off the hook for and can't be sued for. Must be nice to have politicians in one's pockets.
Pharmaceuticals are a big one. Longterm studies are virtually non-existent until tens of thousands have suffered and lab mice are generally a poor substitute for real people. Doctors and pharmacists are playing alchemy with people's brains and bodies.
I live very close to the westclox factory. These poor girls, and those in charge KNEW it was dangerous, just not the complete severity.
You're right that they likely didn't understand all of the dangers of radium exposure. But the managers steered clear of interacting with it. So they surely knew that activities like licking brushes would lead to direct exposure and some degree of danger.
One of my favorite historical cases, thank you for covering 👍
It can never be overplayed what these women went through and how hard they had to fight for even a semblance of justice 🖤
Agreed - except you mean OVERplayed, it can easily be underplayed and was for a long timer
@@Videofilealways I completely did! Thank you for pointing out my error, will see if I can edit 👌
I absolutely love how deep in detail you go with each case you cover.
Yours is one of my absolute favorite channels on UA-cam. I hope you are able to keep up the great work
"Drawing out the law suit in the hopes that Grace and the other defendants would die..."
That is just stone cold and pure evil. RIP the all of the Radium Girls 🖤🖤
Do "Fossie Jaw" - the phosphorus industry.
it stuns me that they just had children working in match factories
Some of the first girl who got sick from radium were asked repeated about phosphorus exposure because the dentist had seen that before.
I love how the medical profession just threw that lady under the bus and said she had an STD.
Don't forget doctors back then knew nothing of radiation poisoning. And several STDs can cause similar effects in the early-mid stages.
The company helped promote that idea as well even as more and more women got sick and died.
That would have probably ostracised her in the community... she'd have been seen as sinful and shameful, especially if unmarried.
And now it's better? Now women get told they just imagine their health issues.
@@LittleKitty22 Yes, the medical prejudice against women is disgraceful!
I feel like I've been waiting for this from this channel...I am OBSESSED with the radium girls...it's so wholesome, gruesome, and terrifying at the same time...just an overall tragedy! thank you for this video!!!
I worked in an antique store and collected radium watches, still have a few stached away in containers. I'm glad to see that you cover this one-in-history story, it's a wild one.
Glow in the dark has really evolved from death juice to puke juice, don't lick glowstick water it tastes nasty, looks cool though.
I remember mum talking about the radium girls when i was young, maybe she mentioned thats how they realised everyone was dying from it but I only remembered the clocks, not that half the country was chugging radium, what i remembered was the snow on the tip of the iceberg o.o
When I was a teenager I chewed on a glowstick till it broke, I'll never forget the flavour.
@@Dancingonthesun worse than a switch cartridge?
@@pyroxide8442 it tasted like the taint of a chemistry lab
Ummmm thanks but I’m not dumb enough to lick glow stick water. I’ll leave that to you
I forgot it was Tuesday! Pleasant surprise.
Let's not forget the girls only got compensation because a man got radium poisoning. And actually the corps were very slippery about exactly what medical care was covered...
Yeah, but come onnnn doll, a feller's worth five dames, at least! We gave ya the vote 8 years ago, what more do yas want?
Exactly...
@@GlennDavey You sound so stupid thanks I needed a good laugh
I’m really glad you did one on this. It’s something that people have forgotten about. There’s one person I’m glad you didn’t include because it was a horrible death and there’s photos.
I for one am grateful for our past generations and their hunger for innovation and discovery. These people gave us the safety we have today around electricity, radiation and gas.
To quote the great Simon Whistler: “the past was the worst”
Simon Whistler is the worst
@@smfe yes but don't say anything bad about whistler's mother
@@Frenchblue8 Nice one! 😹
The more you learn about it, the more you agree with this statement.
Thankyou for another fascinating and informative episode. Considering all the toxic substances used for health benefits or cosmetics (arsenic, cyanide, radium, etc), it's amazing we haven't caused our own extinction!
Ah yes, “Here is a new substance that we know absolutely nothing about but it glows in the dark and looks really cool so let’s eat it, bathe in it and wipe our butts with it.”
The worst part of this case is that the health of these women were completely disregarded in favour of profit. They would deny all effects even though the women were literally rotting away. We've come along way but we still need to be aware of how women, in particular working class women, have their health ignored
Usually it's working class because they can't afford treatments. This goes for women and men.
My Father worked for years as a painter, inhaling all those fumes. Never saw a single nickel, ignored his health until he got COPD and later died of bladder cancer.
Why does everything have to be "this gender had it harder blah blah." While missing the fact that people aren't getting the help they should from a system that seems to bend over backwards for anyone but them.
@@cursedcancersurvivor It's because of how successful Capitalism has been at fragmenting the working class. Feminism is now used as a tool by the rich and powerful to divide and suppress the working class instead of being a force that can be used to unite them. Men vs. women is the prevailing narrative and it's in the interest of the powerful to keep it that way so the workers don't realize it should be the poor vs. the rich.
@@Rappadurzen it isnt capitalism, it is Corporatism. What it targets is the free market and property rights. Capitalism has been falsely defined by marxists as "greed', which is false, greed was around a long time before capitalism was even a thing. The poor vs the rich is class warfare, a marxist ploy, and yet the poor, the workers get conned by Corporations who centralize control and thats where things fall apart. Capitalism, free market of ideas and property rights is decentralized, the opposite of Corporatism which is centralization. And Feminism stems from marxism, to send women to work so they cant raise their kids, the schools then do and so they can tax women as well as the men.
@@Rappadurzen "Feminism is now used as a tool by the rich and powerful to divide and suppress the working class instead of being a force that can be used to unite them." true except it was also used and intended to be that way, it isnt a new thing. It is just more blatant nowadays because it has become more radicalized and the fall out of its implication in the west has caused unstable homes, and depressed women, troubled youth, etc I'm sure someone will come along to list the 'good things' but feminism reached its end, now it is denying the reality of women for the sake of virtue signaling and the woke crowd. Again, marxism in full swing, instead of class warfare, it now uses identity warfare
@@86BarbOmega Bingo.
I’ve been a fan of yours since early on and I must say this is my favourite video of yours thus far. Thank you to these poor women for bearing the brunt of the sacrifice of this knowledge, and to you for shining a light on it.
There really needs to be a video done on the Granville Train Disaster, NSW, Australia (83 people died, 84 as of 2017 once they counted the baby.
It was truly a Horror Story.
I really appreciate that you take the time to inform us about the culture surrounding this event. I've known about the radium girls for awhile, but never knew how widespread the usage of radium was, and the event makes so much more sense because of it. Keep up the amazing work.
I think you’d do a great job covering the “Sampoong Department Store collapse”, surprised it isn’t on this channel yet!
Send him an email. He has everything posted in the description :)
Ehh it’s been done to death
@@snogglewort1 But not by HIM
You should check out Plainly Difficult! Similar content with good quality :)
would be interesting to see him cover that too
The dreaded era of mercury, lead, & radium being in absolutely everything.
The intro about radium uses added that little extra something all other documentaries about the Radium Girls are just missing.
Right on ...I suggested this story in your comments when I first started watching your channel!!! So excited watching it now!!
Nothing says 1902 like a radium suppository
No matter how many times I read about the Radium Girls, I'm incensed.
So, as if we didn't know, big business is egregious, immoral and corrupt and will sell its mother for the next dollar..
I learned about the radium girls from a documentary like this many years ago. This is why it is so important to fight for what is right and to never stay quiet when a wrong is being done. May they rest in peace.
@DragonBat362 oh I know. That one statement was the reason I finally commented above. Imagine being in a meeting with some other men back then and actually talking about making it as drawn out as possible to outlast the lives of those young women they virtually, if not intentionally, killed. And then they all went home to their own families, some of whom probably had daughters the same ages. It's disgusting and a hundred years later the same thing would happen and the thinking would be the same with some people.
I am so glad you covered this story. It needs to be told.
Another fantastic story well done! I wait anxiously for the next one. Such a great job in every detail.
I used to live in a city that had the largest radium plant in the world in it. The radium ended up seeping into the groundwater supply and into a nearby lake, turning it a bright orange color. happened around the early 90's. though the local and state government have done a TON to cover it all up and make sure nobody knows about it. if anybody is interested, the town is called Sellersville in Pennsylvania. Water tests have been done recently, and the water is still highly contaminated with radium, and a number of other contaminants that are well above legal and health limits.
I remember at the Los Alamos Laboratory museum, there was an exhibit where you could use a Geiger counter on various objects, including a Radium-coated dish. The Radium dish gave off more radiation than a smoke detector. I was 13 at the time, and I didn't know the use of Radium on household objects was a thing, so it baffled me to see something give off that much radiation.
A crushingly sad story that only in more recent years has been frankly brought into the light of inspection & acknowledgement. Thank you for making this video. Please let these poor girls rest in peace and their memory not be forgotten.
i've now watched every single video on this channel. i dont think there's another cannel i can say that for. excellent job on this video as always
I tattoo and every so often someone says they want a “ glow in the dark tattoo”
There are a few tattoo inks made to glow .
I refuse to use them and refuse to do the tattoos .
Tattoo ink is not regulated by the FDA and a lot comes from over seas . You have no idea if the ink is safe to use . I would not put in my body so I won’t anyone else .
Proof that people are dumbasses. Again.
I told my dad about this case when arguing why we have so many health and safety rules compared to when he was working in his prime. A lot of our H&S procedures today are written in the blood of people who didn't have the same courtesy given to them.
Saw this years ago on TV and always wanted to know more about it. Thank you so much! I love your videos
Always interesting and informative, keep up the good work fella.
Ignorance is not always bliss....and tragic at times. As a kid I remember breaking open thermometers and pouring the Mercury in my hand, it was fascinating. It's a wonder I'm still alive.
Good grief!
Having read the comments here, I think a lot more detail could have been included in this episode. The situation was far more sinister than the mere sad premature deaths mentioned in the video. Incredibly sad details of the suffering and affect on the body long before death.
He doesn't go super deep with the details. He gets straight to the point which given how gruesome the details are, it's probably best.
@@nenebrat2389 yeah death by radioactivity is pretty much the worst kind of death. You're pretty much falling apart while forming tumors. I was glad he spared us the details
I love this channel so direct and simple
This is awesome, because I'm getting ready to direct the play Radium Girls. Their story is SO important.
One of the reasons why this hits me is if I lived then, it would totally have been a job I would have taken. I could have been them. Also, seeing how many every day products had radium in them makes me sick to my stomach.
This is one story I can confidently comment on, where I live (in Scotland) we used to have a clock factory called `Westclox`, the women there, painted the dials with radium, and just as in the story, they `licked` the brushes, the results were the same, terrible illnesses, and all through ignorance!
Great presentation! Please do Thalidomide disaster in 1960s.
Just found this channel and subscribed. The narrator speaks with a calming manner and got me hooked.