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hey weirdos I'm Ash and I'm Elena and this is [Music] morbid this is morous I don't even know
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why I sang it it just started happening and I went with it as she's scunny yeah I believe the word you're looking
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for is scun scun it's scary and Cy me me and Mikey have determined that she shall remain as such today o she
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open my diet coke opening cuz that's a scunny behavior she is in a place of scunt right
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now serving scunt scunt scunt scun truly truly serving scun we did Magic this morning and I we did why are
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you laughing that's the [Laughter] truth what she just like I don't know we just did Magic this morning there more
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to it there's more there's more we did Magic this morning and we did manifestations and I manifested self
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love and light and abundance and I'm feeling all of those things she's feeling abundance I think cuz mine went
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crazy it did go crazy and I think it just reignited my scunny soul it said baby party on player I
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think it's supposed is it astrologically there's some uh some [ __ ] happening chiron's in retrograde that exactly I
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don't know if it's Chiron or Chon so come at me bro but is that good or is that bad I think
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that's pretty bad oh okay that makes sense let me do a little Google let do a little goo I need to get it under wraps
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do a little Googy yeah it just went into retrograde oh I'll tell you what it means for you and your astrological sign
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not all of you but Capricorns and Geminis yeah let's go accept the cookies cuz that's the only thing you're allowed
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to do in life I always accept cookies in reality yeah obviously so considered an
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asteroid in a comet chyon Chiron begins its annual retrograde on July 2 it will take place as chyon chyon is
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positioned in the first zodiac sign of Aries where it has been since 2018 and it's going to last until the day after
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your birthday Elena oh day after your birthday the day of your birthday Elena so for me chyon Chiron retrograde holds
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a mirror to the medicine within you medicine for yourself which when claimed becomes medicine for all like chyon
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chiron's mythological Journey retrograde is an invitation to step into the role of he healer and observe how your
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experiences and the gold you have gleaned from them are your offering to the world I like it I don't know if it
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resonates but whatever oh you Gemini ger no Capricorn chyon Chiron is a doorway between the spiritual and the human and
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for the last six years chyron Chiron six years we've been doing the podcast for six years hopefully that's I haven't
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read ahead so I don't know what this is has been cracking open the foundations of who you are so that you can remember
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yourself as this doorway retrograde invites you deep within traveling with you down into your roots formative years
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and earlier memories there is medicine here waiting for you and I'm the medicine oh my goodness take a dose
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[ __ ] just a spoonful of sugar also just to just to say who I was reading that from oh that would
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be I'm the medicine take a dose [ __ ] there it is you found your Housewives they I t-shirts um just to just to give
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credit where credit is due that was from the yoga journal thanks yoga journal you're welcome so all you Capricorns and
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germanas out there now you know that one of you is the medicine and the other one
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needs it so wait what a beautiful outside look glance at our relationship I love that sometimes you're the
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medicine though I hope so sometimes I don't always need that I don't always need the
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medicine you don't always need me no I'm I'm asking like do I'm like okay good I'm not the one that always needs the
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medicine no that's good sometime sometimes no a lot of the time all I need the medicine well speaking of medicine and
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Cha speaking of uh you know scientific advancements in medicine we're going to talk about the radium girls today the
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radium girls yes so that it's a see did you see that segue we're talking about medicine and Science and chemical
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elements and [ __ ] you know it's there uh but we're going to talk about the radium
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girls today everybody um this is a little different it's a different uh true crimey my tummy's growling I don't
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know if anyone heard that it's digesting the eggplant it is I had egant uh but this is a little different
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case cuz it's not like is it like dark history sort of yeah it's definitely you know most people would say a Prime hasur
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here you told me a couple things and it sure sounds like it but a different kind
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so let's get into it shall we so we're going to start off first by kind of giving a brief you know look into what
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radium is because if know without understanding radium this isn't going to hit as hard I mean it's going to hit but
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you're going to be like what the [ __ ] is that yeah so in 1898 after spending years researching the radioactive nature
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of mineral pitch blend of which uranium is a major element okay polish French scientist you might have heard of her
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Marie C Marie C Madam C I thought that sounded familiar and a hubby Pierre Pierre Pierre Pierre they concluded that
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the pitch blend contained at least two other previously undiscovered chemical elements one of these elements was
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radium now a lot of elements on the periodic table are are freely occurring elements yes radium is not one of those
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um a freely occurring element is an element that is not combined with or chemically bonded with other chemical
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elements okay but radium instead is a byproduct produced in the decay of uranium another radioactive element oh
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okay that's interesting yeah see so radium requires a very long process of isolation in order to be
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extracted um in fact with the help of her laboratory assistant Andre I hope I say this right de de de Madame C
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required several tons of pitch blend before she was able to extract just one tenth of a gram of radium whoa so it is
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Inc it was incredibly rare So C's discovery of radium was notable for many reasons one of the biggest was that it
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proved that there were other elements in nature that were not even discovered yet
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yeah that's so they like holy [ __ ] we didn't even know about this how cool that a woman found it she's a she's a
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badass totally um also the discovery of radium served as the foundation of cir's
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work in physics which later she would get awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry for Wow and in the years that followed
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she spent the majority of her career focused on isolating pure metallic radium which she achieved in 1910 that
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must have been a little bit scary for her oh yeah she's a badass yeah she did all kinds of [ __ ] uh the girls have like
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um one of those little like Who Was books on Marie cir and they also have like a just like a standalone book about
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Marie ciri actually so Marie curri correctly theorized that among its potential uses this new element she
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found could have important and honestly revolutionary applications in medicine oh like me there's my segue uh but the
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fact remained that it was really difficult and super costly to isolate and extract it's not like this was easy
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to do right it was also true that although not as well established or radium was seriously hazardous and very
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difficult to handle for instance in 1901 this is crazy in 1901 the curies gave a
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fellow scientist a tiny little amount of radium to present at a conference in Paris mhm and before leaving for France
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this man tucked it was in a little vial yeah like a glass vial so he tucked that
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vial into an interior pocket of his jacket and exploded it's sealed didn't open up
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but the next time he undressed he noticed a red mark on his stomach that appeared to be worsening in the hours
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and days that followed oh no and according to author Kate Moore she said quote it didn't get bigger but it seemed
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somehow to get deeper as though his body was still exposed to the source of the wound and the flame was burning him
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still oh my God so what that scientist didn't know at the time was that he was experiencing a radiation burn from the
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tiny amount of radium in the vial that he and the curies believe was totally safely stored in there wow in fact one
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of the other challenges of radium was that it has a relatively short shelf life and begins to break down really
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quickly which is no bueno yeah cuz it releases alpha beta and gamma radiation in the process which is very damaging to
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living systems and tissue in unchecked amounts okay so while the glass vial itself might have been safely tucked
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away in his jacket the element inside that vial was blasting out radiation waves directly into his skin oh my God
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and probably like anybody that was even near him yeah other people could have been exposed exposed yeah in this in
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other cases of minor exposure and that's minor exposure uh the injury appears like a worsening burn like it keeps
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getting worse but the body will heal itself on its own eventually when it's separated from the source but in more
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severe cases or in cases of repeated exposure to this radiation you can be disfigured or you can die wow cuz as
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we'll see in the in this case of the radium girls if it gets inside of you it just keeps pumping out radiation it's
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like it keeps getting lit and lit and lit like it doesn't heal it won't allow your body to heal itself so like minor
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wounds won't heal themselves oh my God you could get if you're if you ingest this radium and you scratched your arm
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mhm it wouldn't heal you'd have an open wound forever and that would be it what the [ __ ] so despite the dangerous and
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costly risks associated with handling and extracting radium it did seem like a huge thing of value for a lot of
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different avenues like if we if they could get it under control particularly in manufacturing in its process of Decay
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the particles inside of it charge one of its phosphorus components Z zinc sulfide
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and this causes what a lot of people know about radium a green glow okay phosphorescence kind of glow yeah
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because the glow is a natural part of the process of decay of radium it really it didn't need an external source of
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power to make that happen which is like a really ideal source of light for certain circumstances and environments
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that being said this luminescent glow was pretty minimal and it continued to break down over time so it was limited
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with how it could be used but throughout the first decade of the 20th century several extraction plants were
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established across the US us to like harness the power of radium wow cuz they were just like what is this like what
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can we do with this [ __ ] glows like what do we do with this cool braah it glows like we got check this out this is
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Wiggy cool now among those enthusiastic about the potential of radium was Dr Sabin I think it's Sabin Arnold Von
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Sasaki W uh who was a chemical scientist who in 1915 developed luminescent paint
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ooh the paint seemed to be an ideal use for radium since it really didn't require much radium to produce and it
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could be used to paint clock and watch faces instrument panels and other objects that really required minimal
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light to be seen in the dark but it could make certain things glow so you could like especially the clock faces
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like I If if you've seen them from like the 50s and stuff like a clock with like
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that green glow yeah that's that oh okay so that same year sash shaki partnered with Dr George Willis to establish the
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radium luminous materials corporation which was aimed at radium extraction and the production of luminous and paint the
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next year the company was renamed the United States radium Corporation and the mission was the scope of the mission was
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narrowed to the production and application of the luminescent paint and factories were then opened in New Yark
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and Orange New Jersey so all of a sudden radium is becoming a thing now in the winter of
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1917 a young girl named Catherine job was like many of the girls who would come to work at us radium she was
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intelligent she was very enthusiastic and she was driven to achieve great things in her life nice at just 14 years
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old oh wow she decided to act on a tip about jobs in the paint application Department of us radium so she quit her
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job at the department store she was working at walked into the plant manager's office and convinced that man
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to hire her hell yeah girl which like what a badass at 14 years old absolutely yeah throughout much to the 20th century
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factories and manufacturing jobs were honestly among the most reliable sources of employment for workingclass Americans
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of all ages really particularly those with poor education or limited specialty skills sure still the work tended to be
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like tedious kind of menial dangerous so the jobs were not very coveted they were
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just things like everybody can do this the painting jobs at us radium on the other hand seem to offer something a
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little more exciting than the typical Factory assembly line job M um so what Catherine had said was the work was
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interesting and of a far higher type than the usual Factory job because unlike Factory floors which were like
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dirty loud dangerous just like not where you want to be the application rooms at
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us radium were referred to as a studio oo where yeah like they really knew how to Market these jobs and this was where
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talented young women with a steady hand and creativity they worked with an exciting new product called luminescent
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Paint and at a time when it was being touted as quote a Wonder element radium and selling for
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$120,000 per gram which is roughly $3 million in 2024 blink blinkink blink the opportunity to work with radium was very
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thrilling absolutely very exciting very like oh my good like glamorous even especially those who would never have
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access to it otherwise and honestly they got like I think they got something like
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three times the amount they would get in a normal Factory like very well paid and
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it was just like no and I think they hired a c they wanted a certain look for these factory work so they really went
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for like the whole vibe of this whole thing this is so interesting very interesting the job was simple enough at
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its core okay the pre-printed paper clock watch and instrument dials came in and they came in in like a large stack
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and each girl would work as quick as they could to apply the luminescent paint to the letters and numbers on the
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dial giving them that glow that we know but for girls like Katherine sha the girl was the job was so much more than
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just you know tracing lines on a paper as fast as she could and addition to applying the paint each dial painter was
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responsible for mixing her own paint which meant adding a small amount of the radium powder to water and gum adhesive
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to create the glowing paint that was marketed as undar okay which I'm like who came up with
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that name undar cuz they're like it glows so it's not dark which means you're making it UND dark like okay as
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they worked though the radium powder got everywhere it covered the studio and it
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covered the painters and a fine coating of what they thought was this fancy [ __ ] powder oh God that's it's rare
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it's this Wonder element and I'm covered in it you know like and it's just like and it's not dirty it makes you glow
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yeah like it's it's got a luminescence to it you almost look like you're sparkling it's what we would use like
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highlighter for now exactly it's got that like vibe to it so I think it it had this whole Mystique that they were
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definitely feeding into MH now the work of a dial painter wasn't just a matter of chemistry and honestly speed because
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they wanted them to do it as fast as they could it also required a little bit of skill and a lot of creativity because
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the products creat by us radium from wrist watches instrument panels you know clocks for the wall they were really
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small these little elements that they had to paint and often they had these like tiny little details but these tiny
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details were really critical to their operation and if they were going to be used or not like for example the
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smallest pocket watches that they produce measured just 3 and 1 12 CM across the face wow and the like so the
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tiny tiny little like millimeter things they had to paint they couldn't just like swipe it over it they had to like
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trace the thing so to ensure accuracy dial painters worked with really tiny brushes they were like camel hair
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brushes and they had to be capable of doing the finest details so one painter said I had never seen a brush as fine as
00:18:18
that I would say it possibly had about 30 hairs in it it was exceptionally fine wow because the consequences of an error
00:18:26
could be very costly to the company you know accuracy and consistency in these little tiny details was very very very
00:18:34
important the brushes were delicate and slim for sure as we hear but the bristles would like spread out after a
00:18:40
while like any brush you know they just get worn especially when you're working quickly I'm sure exactly because you're
00:18:45
really doing this as fast as you can that was going to make mistakes happen so what sha said was we put the brushes
00:18:52
in our mouths because that was a technique they had made up called lip pointing and it was passed down from the earliest
00:19:01
dial painters who were themselves hired away from their previous jobs as painters of China dolls so they were
00:19:08
they could do those fine details lip pointing was when the painter would wet the bristles of the brush with their
00:19:14
lips or their tongue oh God pressing those bristles together to make that fine tip like we would with like a
00:19:21
regular brush you know like you just to get it really thin not covered in Radium
00:19:26
no the girls totally unbeknownst to them while lip pointing was the standard practice in the US it was not that way
00:19:34
in Europe in fact European manufacturers had completely abandoned brushes alt together because they ended up using
00:19:43
like implements that would hold that fine points so they wouldn't have to do that okay like glass rods sharpened
00:19:49
sticks even like metal needles always more advanced so and it didn't ever cross the girl's mind that putting the
00:19:55
brush covered in Radioactive material in their mouths could be dangerous because
00:20:02
while the dial workers were hard at work in the factory wealthy and Elite people
00:20:06
all over the nation were saying how radium is the greatest discovery in the ages like they used it in glassware and
00:20:13
lingerie and toothpaste miracle cures were being made with it like my God it was being touted
00:20:20
as like the [ __ ] Cur all like this is going to be the thing that changes everything so why the [ __ ] wouldn't you
00:20:26
think it's in toothpaste oh my can't it be in my mouth even though it had literally like in a contained small vial
00:20:34
like burned that man yeah that that they just didn't release that information or
00:20:39
a lot of this is sh why yeah one product actually marketed to men at this time was a tonic
00:20:48
that they said restored Vitality to the elderly making old men young I don't know about that baby so if you can drink
00:20:56
it as a tonic oh my God of course you can quickly put a [ __ ] brush that's been dipped in it on your lips for a
00:21:03
second why wouldn't you and from and the thing is they were being told by the people who own these corporations and
00:21:10
factories it is completely safe right stick it in your mouth it's fine put it on your like whatever you like this
00:21:18
radium isn't going to hurt you oh God they were told it's beautiful look at it yeah look it Glo you you're sparkly so
00:21:24
they were like okay why wouldn't they believe that yeah no totally so from the moment the Cur isolated and extracted
00:21:30
radium from uranium it was apparent the element was dangerous and destructive like you just mentioned it burned a
00:21:37
guy's stomach just being in a glass vial in his pocket y the problem it seems was
00:21:41
a matter of communication more than the actual knowledge that everyone had so Georgetown radiation expert Timothy
00:21:49
Jorgenson said people knew that radioactivity released energy and they didn't see how adding some energy to
00:21:56
their bodies could possibly be harmful okay they just weren't yeah science wasn't that advanced yet and they just
00:22:02
weren't told that like this isn't the kind of energy you want to be adding to your body like there's good energy and
00:22:07
bad energy yeah in fact despite the price of products containing radium enthusiasm for the products seemed to be
00:22:15
never ending I mean it had like a boundless potential to be everything for example advertisements for rator a
00:22:22
health tonic sold the Elixir as a cure for the living dead and Perpetual Sun shine and it promised to cure everything
00:22:32
from arthritis to gout wow yeah so it was like the thing and the Public's understanding or probably better labeled
00:22:40
and Dave said this which is very true uh public misunderstanding it was a it was
00:22:46
a catastrophic misunderstanding by the public because of the people on top the people on top
00:22:53
were causing this misunderstanding CU they just wanted to get [ __ ] go yeah exactly uh the Public's misunderstanding
00:23:00
of radium seems probably like we're looking at this today in 2024 goggles being like Oh my God like why are you
00:23:09
not understanding that radioactivity is bad but in the early part of the 20th century when most people's education
00:23:16
stopped after uh grammar school scientific knowledge was pretty limited like you said and as is often the case
00:23:23
today people just keyed in on buzzwords an Associated scientific discovery with human progress and of course it's going
00:23:32
to be unquestionably positive right like we're all progressing we're evolving this is great technology and as a result
00:23:39
the public honestly rarely questioned and we've seen this in a few cases they rarely questioned whether products
00:23:45
containing radium radium was safe and they've done that throughout history we've seen I mean look arsenic eaters
00:23:52
like there's all kinds of times when they're just being led to believe that this is fine by all these companies
00:23:57
pushing these products on people and it it's easy to go along with the flow and think that you're being told the truth
00:24:04
when and not questioning that's why it's important to question especially because
00:24:08
something has a a seemingly desirable outcome exactly that's exactly it now quite the opposite in fact they
00:24:16
developed a rabid enthusiasm for the fat of consuming radium based products whenever possible so it really went the
00:24:22
other way and in the radium dial factories where the dial painters were in literal constant contact with the
00:24:29
Powder and Paint enthusiasm for radium was at an all-time high in fact some of the girls actually liked consuming the
00:24:36
small amounts of paint because they like the way it tasted oh that's interesting
00:24:41
yeah apparently it tasted good it's like Pika yeah yeah exactly now the problem of course was that radium was literally
00:24:49
anything that's safe it was everything unsafe quite the opposite and although it did have promising applications in
00:24:55
medicine cuz we are able to harness very unsafe chemicals yeah when you know people know how to do that and make them
00:25:04
safe you know like but by itself no it wasn't you know it wasn't as a tonic or other health fed like they wasn't being
00:25:12
safe in those usages Medicine sure you're going to figure out a way to make that safe tonics Health fads [ __ ] all
00:25:21
that [ __ ] like toothpastes and [ __ ] no we're not getting it right there and by
00:25:25
the time World War I was in full swing the radium plants and their dial painters were working overtime to meet
00:25:32
growing demand for these clocks watches all this stuff yet at the same time that
00:25:37
these young women were inhaling and consuming small amounts of radium Marie C and her husband were beginning to
00:25:43
understand the destructive power of the element that they discovered oh man and it was true that radium had the ability
00:25:50
which is I mean incredible it has the ability to destroy tumors and other canceris grows that's where we get
00:25:55
radiation like that's of course we at it today and we say like where would we be
00:26:01
right you know um but the more they worked with it the more they began to recognize that its power to do that was
00:26:08
indiscriminate it was just as likely to destroy healthy cells as it was to destroy Health unhealthy so it's like
00:26:16
not what we're looking for we just need to harness it the correct way and we have not and it's like now the whole
00:26:22
world is just like eating this [ __ ] up so it wasn't just the cues who knew it either the founder of you us radium Dr
00:26:30
Sabin Arnold Von sash shaki had also become very very familiar with the destructive power of radium how familiar
00:26:39
yeah according to author Kate Moore who we will cite the sources in the notes of
00:26:43
course early in the company's history radium had actually gotten into Von shash shaki's left index finger and she
00:26:52
said quote when he realized he hacked the tip of it off saying it now looked as though an animal had grow had not it
00:27:01
what this was because according to Timothy Jorgenson radium behave behaves very much like calcium because the body is
00:27:10
accustomed to using calcium to build bone it will recognize radium as a kind of calcium and so it will absorb the
00:27:19
radioactive material into your bone and then it will just begin to Decay your bone what the [ __ ] because it mistakes
00:27:26
it for calcium so regenerating and thinks it needs to like push it out to the rest of your body to
00:27:32
reabsorb wow calcium and that's why it just destroys cuz it just gets pumped out
00:27:39
that's it's that's horrifying but it's also so fascinating exactly that your body can't tell the difference isn't it
00:27:46
why it body so yeah like the body is so smart obviously and like there are miraculous things that the body does but
00:27:53
then to to have something dangerous enter your system and to just be like oh calcium yeah like
00:28:00
body know body know but this is all to say within at least a few years of founding his company us radium Von shaki
00:28:09
knew radium base paint was highly toxic and extraordinarily dangerous you just got
00:28:16
so Boston ex extraordinarily I don't know how to say that extraordinarily extraordinarily was
00:28:24
great extraordinarily dangerous but he kept that little bit of Knowledge from his employees oh good eating the paint
00:28:33
[ __ ] up to say the very very least yep in fact as soon as most painters were introduced to the lip pointing technique
00:28:42
most inquired as to whether the paint was you know in any way harmful that was everybody's first question they're like
00:28:48
cool that I do this or not CU that's the thing like it's not like these girls walked in there and were just like
00:28:55
chemicals sure I'll just eat it like they asked the people in charge the people who should be telling them
00:29:03
whether these things are dangerous right and these people all their managers would say go for it it's completely
00:29:10
safe completely safe knowing how bad it was now within a few years many dial painters in the New Jersey factories had
00:29:19
actually become like local celebrities like this was a glamorous w wow that's so crazy isn't that wild cuz unlike
00:29:27
traditional Factor workers like I was saying before they had kind of a Vibe they were going for they were young
00:29:33
attractive and those that earned a decent wage were often happy to spend at least some of that money to you know
00:29:39
look good they were getting the latest fashion so they were they were always looked at as these glamazons that just
00:29:44
like work in this this studio painting with luminescent paint and they always come out cover you know like it was like
00:29:53
this whole vibe and above all else it was the radium itself that that made these girls instantly recognizable as
00:30:00
being radium girls who worked in those in the factories yeah because during their hour spent in the studio like we
00:30:06
said before it was impossible to not get radium dust all over you in your hair on
00:30:12
your clothes so when they would leave work for the day they had an unmistakable neon glow stop it so they
00:30:18
would walk out of there as the sun's going down and they're glowing literally yeah oh God Ed a
00:30:25
painter Edna B said when I would go home at night my clo clothing would shine in
00:30:30
the dark you could see where I was my hair my face the girls Shone like the watches Did in the Dark Room wow so like
00:30:37
you just watch this like line of beautiful young girls glowing come out glowing physically legitimately in every
00:30:46
sense of the word glowing like that must have been like of course you want to just like idolize this situation it just
00:30:53
must seem so like otherworldly and like wild yes it absolutely does like a yeah like some of the the young women
00:31:02
and girls would wear clothing to work that they wanted to wear to the dance later like on Fridays and they would do
00:31:08
that so they would get the radium glow on that dress that they wanted to wear and then later at the dance they would
00:31:14
be [ __ ] glowing on the dance floor so everybody's like who's everybody's like there's that radi girl and it's like
00:31:19
they this was awesome it was like a yes but not everyone was as enthusiastic about the job or the effects of working
00:31:27
with the paint okay according to more some found the paint made them sick one woman even got sores on her mouth after
00:31:34
just a month of working there uhhuh and within a few years even those who love their jobs like Catherine sha they
00:31:41
started to notice that there were certain reactions that they were having trouble explaining after just a year in
00:31:46
the studio Catherine started getting really bad acne and went to go see a doctor and at first the doctor was like
00:31:53
oh you know puberty you were you're 15 so the doctor was like you know you're 15 years old it's probably puberty yeah
00:32:01
but then he ran some simple blood tests just to make sure everything was on the up and up and he noticed some uh pretty
00:32:07
unusual changes that he'd seen in other Factory workers and he said they were ones that had been exposed to high
00:32:13
levels of phosphorus okay and as far as Catherine knew she didn't work with or even near any phosphorus so the
00:32:19
anomalies in the blood were just kind of like this is perplexing yeah that's weird that's suspicious neither
00:32:25
Catherine nor any of the other girls knew it but they were working in very close proximity to phosphorus and it was
00:32:33
beginning to affect them physically oh God this was part of the whole thing right the symptoms but they weren't told
00:32:39
that the symptoms of radiation poisoning were alarming to Katherine and her co-workers but their minds were then set
00:32:46
at ease because Dr Von shaki's partner Dr George Willis told them there was nothing to worry about don't worry about
00:32:53
it has nothing to do with your job shut up stop going to the doctor look over here shut up
00:32:58
as Moore pointed out when one of the greatest radium authorities tells you that there you have no need to worry
00:33:04
quite simply you don't you don't worry yeah yeah in fact Willis's reassurances were so comforting that the girls even
00:33:10
began to laugh off the increasing frequency of weird occurrences like they were just kind of like whoa this is so
00:33:16
weird like can't have anything to do with this oh God including painter Grace frier who
00:33:23
recalled quote nasal discharges on my handkerchief used to be luminous in the dark what yeah so her boogers were
00:33:32
shining her boogers were were shining oh my God sometimes for fun or to make an each other laugh the girls would paint
00:33:38
their faces their nails and even their teeth with the radium paint no mhm oh my God
00:33:47
yeah now despite their employer insistence that everything was on the up and up everything is entirely completely
00:33:55
don't worry about it safe couldn't be safer could not be safer the fact remains that many people painters and
00:34:01
ordinary citizens were continuing to get sick some like the worker who complain of the mouth sores after a mouth yeah
00:34:08
showed signs of radiation Burns While others had more complicated problems cuz radiation Burns at least you know like
00:34:16
that that scientist when you're taken away from the radiation usually your body can heal itself but others had more
00:34:23
complicated problems like bone deterioration some girls took their concerns straight to to their regular
00:34:28
doctors but because radiation poisoning and radiation Burns were so uncommon their symptoms and injuries were like
00:34:36
mostly misdiagnosed as other things others who went to their managers or company doctors were just ignored or
00:34:43
worse they would just the company doctors or managers would just misdiagnose them with sexually
00:34:48
transmitted diseases are you kidding me to smear the reputations of the women knowing full well what was actually
00:34:56
happening yep and they would do this to smear the reputations of them to discourage them from disclosing their
00:35:02
symptoms to anyone else because if you are being told by your company doctor you have a sexually transmitted disease
00:35:09
in the 1920s oh my God and you're he's going to be like go right ahead go talk to your doctor about it like you're not
00:35:17
going to tell anyone else you're going to be you're being shamed at that point that's so [ __ ] evil yep and given all
00:35:23
the ways that the dial painters were exposed to radium it was uh dentists who usually heard about the first symptoms
00:35:31
because remember a lot of that is going in the in the mouth area beginning in the late 1910s girls were showing up at
00:35:37
their dentist's office with complaints of tooth pain loose teeth ulcers were showing up and in more extreme cases
00:35:46
where the teeth had to be pulled dental surgeons started noticing that the sockets wouldn't heal they would just
00:35:54
stay in open wound and not heal and then they would become infected right of course it's your [ __ ] mouth and they
00:36:00
were like what the [ __ ] is this and these symptoms caused by exposure to radium and its tendency to Decay bone
00:36:06
matter were eventually lumped together into what was informally referred to as radium jaw you can Google radium jaw at
00:36:15
your own risk is it horrible it's just very upsetting I'm about to so when the war ended in late 1918 demand for radium
00:36:25
dials decreased like dramatic crease as did the need for so many dial painters we didn't need as many yeah Mikey and
00:36:33
Ash just looked it up my God at the same time you had a yeah that's the one that's the one uhhuh that's the one just
00:36:43
a toal jog on you both did the same gasp at the same time we're both air sign both you
00:36:50
and I knew you both looked yeah again at your own risk it's graphic and up setting it's so upsetting that people
00:37:00
knew how dangerous this was and they were like yeah go for it drink the tonic yeah just stick that brush in your mouth
00:37:07
um but yeah so while there was still a demand for luminescent watches as the war ended in
00:37:12
1918 um that demand was not enough to keep the hundreds of dial painters employed like there was a lot of dial
00:37:19
painters so the companies including us radium cut back the workforce okay still used them though and many of the
00:37:26
painters who were then in their late teens and early 20s chose to quit their jobs and get married and start
00:37:32
families what this started a second wave of really scary symptoms now that these
00:37:39
girls are saying well I want to start a family right even before attempting to get pregnant and have children many of
00:37:45
the painters had noticed that they had very strange changes to their menstrual cycles I yeah I would yep and then when
00:37:52
they began trying to get pregnant they struggled to conceive and eventually learned that they were steroid
00:37:58
oh my God how heartbreaking yeah and finally many of the women who were able to conceive somehow were soon absolutely
00:38:07
heartbroken by still births by miscarriages and by quote deformities and body structure of their
00:38:15
babies that's so [ __ ] the far-reaching consequences of this are astronomical truly the first death came in 1922 but
00:38:25
only after a long and when I tell you excruciating I mean excruciatingly painful illness by this person oh no a
00:38:34
year earlier 1921 in September former dial painter Girl Molly Maja had visited her dentist and she had to have a tooth
00:38:43
removed cuz she had pain weeks later however she was still experiencing pain and that socket had not healed weeks
00:38:51
later so she went back to the dentist who dis uh diagnosed her with Poria which is an inflammatory disease of the
00:38:58
gums okay and started treating her for that weeks later however it got worse and so had her intense slower jaw pain
00:39:07
to everyone around her it was very clear she was in terrible pain as her teeth were literally slowly and visibly
00:39:14
rotting in her jaw oh God for no reason at all like that everybody could see but
00:39:20
the doctor could not figure out why this was happening that must have been so terrifying for her to H like suddenly
00:39:27
start experiencing that and then have your doctor have no [ __ ] idea why no way to stop it you're in intense pain
00:39:34
all the time and you're just this young girl like so young as far as her dentist
00:39:39
Dr Joseph nef could tell he said it was almost like something was attacking her from the inside but he couldn't tell
00:39:45
what and whatever was affecting Molly's teeth soon spread to her jaw and caused necrosis Molly's teeth and jaw were
00:39:53
literally rotting and in fact at one point and this is very graic just so you know in at one point the dentist
00:40:01
literally used his fingers to literally pull pieces of her jaw out because it just crumbled like Dust In His
00:40:12
Hands I yeah oh like open wounds in her mouth oh my God and he just essentially scooped her jaw out with his hands
00:40:24
unintentionally but it just crumbled to dust feel your jaw feel thick andse your jaw is I mean your
00:40:31
mandible is made to crush and to withand some pressure like think about that you're supposed to be able to like
00:40:38
really gnaw down on things and use it as like a and he just scooped it it just turned to dust cuz that's what it does
00:40:46
it destroys the cells and then you're just disfigured oh yeah but beyond the unbearable physical pain she experienced
00:40:55
the rapid decay of her mouth was accompanied also and this is just so upsetting by a very noticeable odor of
00:41:01
literal Decay flesh and Bone think about like you have like a cavity and you're like
00:41:07
oh [ __ ] I got to brush my teeth extra yes but hers is literally rotting a whole side of her face yeah essentially
00:41:14
and then her gums do everything so she had this intense embarrassment that made her not want to be even around people
00:41:21
and out of ideas her dentist visited the radium plant and asked for the ingredients in the compound just hoping
00:41:27
to clue in on her problem but the managers at the plant were unco cooperative and refused to provide any
00:41:34
information about the paint to him that's how you know pieces of absolute [ __ ] those people and the situation
00:41:41
continued to confound her doctor her dentist Dr nef and those with whom he was Consulting he was trying to get
00:41:48
anybody to like he stopped at nothing to try to get some answers here also just to think that they were like yeah no
00:41:54
we're not going to tell you if this is happening to one girl this is obviously going other people too like you're going
00:41:59
to run into some [ __ ] so you might as well shut down production and just be on
00:42:04
like try to save some people here yeah like call an l and l yeah so Dr nef said whenever a portion of the affected bone
00:42:10
was removed instead of arresting the course of necrosis it speeded it up by the fall of 1922 Molly's condition had
00:42:18
worsened and her entire jaw having largely disintegrated at this point was removed oh my God and they had to remove
00:42:26
pieces of her in her ear as well and then it's like can you even she probably couldn't even speak anymore oh and it
00:42:32
gets worse again I'm going to tell you this gets very very graphic even more graphic it was at that time that doctors
00:42:39
discovered whatever had affected Molly's teeth and jaw had now spread and was eating away at her
00:42:46
throat oh my God so they were unable to stop this which is horrifying cuz they just could once radiation once it's in
00:42:54
there you can't do anything like it's it's happening so they weren't able to stop whatever was eating away at Molly
00:43:02
at Molly's entire body at this point and in September the disease slowly ate its
00:43:07
way through her jugular vein oh my God on September 12th a little past 5:00 p.m. Molly's jugular
00:43:17
vein erupted because it had been eaten away hemorrhaging blood so fast that her sister who was by her side while she was
00:43:26
in bed could do nothing but watch her bleed to death and choke on her own blood it was
00:43:33
literally a river of blood pouring from her mouth and she just choked to death on her own blood that's literally like
00:43:39
something drowned in her own blood oh my God yeah like that is one of the most horrific things I have ever heard 100%
00:43:50
just this young girl yeah her body just gets eaten by they're all like in their early 20s Sometimes Late teens like
00:44:00
they're young oh my God and yeah and her poor family to watch that happen and her
00:44:06
doctor like obviously you're a doctor you feel a responsibility to help somebody and this man did everything he
00:44:12
could yeah and just couldn't do anything they just threw up roadblocks to him and
00:44:16
let Molly die and at that an even if they had found out what was causing it I don't like how can you stop that you
00:44:24
can't you you can't not that I know you can't cuz that's the problem like I I had mentioned this before and we were
00:44:31
shocked by it how like your body mistakes radium for calcium so it just keeps going so because they're very I
00:44:36
guess they're chemically very similar they can be mistaken by the you know your body body but so when it tries to
00:44:43
infuse that radium into the bones like it does with calcium alpha particles are released by the radium and that infuses
00:44:51
into your bones and that's what those are the kind of things that cause all these awful things like cancer like many
00:44:57
of these girls many of these young women got like different kind of cancers later
00:45:01
in life and they all caused bones to disintegrate and rot and just it spreads like wildfire and you can't stop it
00:45:09
really it's so scary how delicate the human body is and after Molly's funeral the family spoke to Dr nef to try to
00:45:18
find out what happened which is when they were informed that although he had kept the diagnosis from her at the time
00:45:25
he hadn't told Molly he said he was diagnosing her with the only thing he knew to do and the only thing that he
00:45:31
had been told could was the cause of this which was syphilis I was thinking you were going to say that but she did
00:45:38
not that's what they would do they would just label it something like that great
00:45:43
the company as you can imagine was the US radium was very excited to be able to use that cop out as C it wasn't radium
00:45:53
poisoning it was syphilis and it's not our fault yeah wrong when they know that wasn't
00:45:59
the real cause no now to do that to her in death like are you kidding me and the
00:46:05
worst thing is it's like they would have like a Coroner's jury at this time where
00:46:10
like it was just like Layman on a jury that would like all agree on the ca you know mean like it was well done so it's
00:46:16
like doctors or anything like that exactly which that does change luckily but that's good now as Molly was dying
00:46:23
in New Jersey hundreds of girls in Ottawa Illinois started lining up for what we're promised to be glamorous jobs
00:46:30
as painters at the radium dial company like us radium the radium dial company produce luminescent clock and watch
00:46:37
faces using the same lip pointing technique as the girls in New Jersey and we it's not like we have social media
00:46:44
where everyone's going to blast out what the [ __ ] happening in New Jersey over
00:46:47
here right so now over in Illinois they have no [ __ ] clue oh my God yeah and despite the Employments employment ads
00:46:54
stated goal of hiring several girls 18 years are over many of the painters at radium dial were under 18 some as young
00:47:02
as 11 years old oh my God and you think what that's going to do to an 11-year-old you have no chance at that
00:47:08
point none like the girls at us radium the new painters at radium dial quickly became you know local celebrities in
00:47:16
Ottawa making the job and making radium seem very glamorous mhm according to one
00:47:22
local paper the girls were the Envy of the others in the little Illinois town when they stepped out with their
00:47:27
boyfriends at night their dresses and hats and sometimes even their hands and faces a glow with the phosphorescence of
00:47:34
the Luminous paint like that like that sounds awesome like anybody would be like holy [ __ ] I want to Sparkle for my
00:47:42
job yeah however unlike us radium product and material waste didn't seem to be a priority at radium dial okay us
00:47:50
radium is [ __ ] or was [ __ ] but radium uh radium dial worse didn't give a [ __ ]
00:47:57
about how dangerous this substance was um the girls frequently covered themselves in Radium powder entertained
00:48:04
each other with the paint during their lunch hours and even took vials home with them here yeah uh Darlene Holm
00:48:12
whose Aunt worked at radium dial told a reporter I can remember my family talking about my aunt bringing home the
00:48:18
little vials of radium paint they would go into their bedroom with the lights off and paint their fingernails their
00:48:23
eyelids their lips and they'd laugh at each other because they glowed in the dark right at home like it's just
00:48:29
entertaining and then you think of they're affecting everybody at home too without even knowing it yeah exactly now
00:48:34
holm's Aunt Peg Looney was one of the first girls hired as a painter at radium dial company in 2020 20 uh 2022 1922
00:48:44
when they opened and like so many of the other 17-year-old Peg loved the job found it so exciting and glamorous also
00:48:51
like the others Peg's boss at radium dial told her and all the other painters that the paint was complete Ely safe not
00:48:57
harmful at all quite the opposite in fact they she said quote they told the girls it would make them
00:49:04
beautiful yeah so they actually were encouraging it um but within a few years it became clear that uh they were not
00:49:11
being given the correct invert information within a few years of taking the job Peg Looney started having health
00:49:17
problems that one would not typically associate with a young woman barely out of her teens okay uh like many of the
00:49:25
other painters it all started started when Peg going to the dentist and having a tooth taken out oh no the procedure
00:49:31
was intended to relieve some of the jaw pain that she had been rece um experiencing but in the days and weeks
00:49:37
after that the pain got worse the extraction sight still didn't heal things only got worse from there and
00:49:44
soon after her jaw pain became so bad and pieces of teeth and jaw bone started falling out of her mouth regularly oh my
00:49:54
God yes like so many other Peg's teeth and jaw problems soon spread to other areas of her body she became anemic she
00:50:02
couldn't walk due to crippling pain oh my God Holmes said her fiance used to pull her around the neighborhood in a
00:50:09
wagon when she was too ill to walk oh and this is her in her early 20s yeah one day in 1928 Peg collapsed at work
00:50:17
and the managers and radium dial made sure she was rushed to the company hospital I bet in fact Holmes said my
00:50:24
grandparents and her siblings had no about her going to the company hospital and we were not allowed to visit what
00:50:31
the [ __ ] just the fact that there was company hospitals is even terrifying yeah they were told she had diptheria
00:50:38
and was quarantined what Peg Looney died in the radium dial hospital at just 24 years old 24 and her parents didn't even
00:50:47
get to go see her they get to see her and according to her niece the radium dial company insisted that Peg be buried
00:50:54
right away and started making preparations yeah I bet but by then the family was
00:51:01
very suspicious that the company might be trying to hide something so one of them badasses that they are they
00:51:07
intervened and insisted the family be allowed to give Peg a Catholic burial yeah and the company relented and even
00:51:13
agreed to allow to have an autopsy performed in the presence of Looney's doctor but when the doctor arrived at
00:51:21
the scheduled time they said oh the autopsy's already been completed oh find thing it was just EP theia oh yeah
00:51:28
totally I bet yeah sure sure this is so [ __ ] shady as [ __ ] big companies usually are yep Peg was just the first
00:51:37
of many radium dial painters to become ill with mysterious illnesses and the company just kept attempting to minimize
00:51:44
them or cover them up in 1925 another painter Katherine Donahue also started feeling sick and experiencing incredible
00:51:53
pain in her hip that actually caused a limp and 1931 radium dial fired Donahue because quote my limping was causing
00:52:02
much talk she and she told a reporter that in 1938 her story was like so many others
00:52:09
her pain soon spread parts of her jaw started falling out of her [ __ ] head and she eventually became bedridden and
00:52:16
unable to walk and the local doctor was unable to diagnose her illness they just
00:52:21
had no idea what was going on but insisted that she did have some kind of radi poisoning but nobody could prove it
00:52:29
that's good though that at least they were like nope you definitely do exactly there were several more women with teeth
00:52:34
bone jaw issues one woman's vertebrae disintegrated from radium incorporation into her bones just turned to [ __ ]
00:52:45
dust in her back and she collapsed her vertebrae her vertebrae turned to dust in her body poof
00:52:56
oh my that's your whole ass spine being compromised by poof turning to dust and you'll never ever be the same after that
00:53:07
now back in New Jersey the deaths of Molly Maja and growing number of illnesses among the dial painters set
00:53:13
off a wave of speculation that the cause might be related to the radium paint finally yeah a former painter kinta
00:53:21
McDonald said many of the girls I knew and had worked with in the plant began to die off alarmingly f
00:53:27
and in response us radium hired a Harvard trained physiologist consultant in 1924 evaluate the situation who know
00:53:36
what's happening oh yeah don't worry they had a plan uh when his report to management contained um incredibly
00:53:43
profoundly negative results and dire dire warnings the company just issued a fake positive report under the
00:53:50
consultant's name are and they submitted that kidding me yep under that consultant's name the lengths these
00:53:57
[ __ ] were willing to go to to make a quick Buck true pieces of absolute and they submitted that to the
00:54:07
New Jersey Department of Labor under that consultant's name they just lied said that he said it was positive no
00:54:14
that's not at all what I said yeah despite us radium's vast efforts to cover up the dangers post by radium in
00:54:21
their plants the consequences were becoming undeniable like they're not going to be able to cover the sub no
00:54:27
everyone is literally dying after they work at your factory or while working at your factory they're literally
00:54:32
disintegrating like they're former workers are disintegrating in front of everybody God when you actually say that
00:54:40
and think about like you're not being hyperbolic people are disintegrating they're rotting decaying oh my God in
00:54:47
1925 a statistician with the presedential insurance company started documenting the numerous illnesses
00:54:54
reported by employees with the company including the many jaw and teeth infections reported in two dead and 12
00:55:00
living painters a short time later the County Medical Examiner Dr Harrison Marlin documented his quote detection of
00:55:09
gamma rays from living dial painters and the Exel exhalation of radon from their
00:55:14
lungs he took it upon himself actually Dr martland he took it upon himself to help prove that these young women were
00:55:20
being poisoned by radium in the paint that they were working with and that it was the cause of their suffering and
00:55:26
event ual deaths wow Dr Marlin was able to show that radium outside of the body is enough to burn obviously like we've
00:55:33
seen and cause harm but when ingested into the body it is so much worse because it will continue to create and
00:55:40
give off radiation essentially forever oh my God it just keeps destroying the living cells around it it doesn't allow
00:55:47
anything to heal and he said this substance they were told was harmless was now basically punching holes into
00:55:53
their bones as they walked around and let me tell you the corporations tried to discredit him but he was relentless
00:56:00
even getting the coroner's jury system abolished to create a more knowledgeable incredible basis for these women to
00:56:06
plead their case in court eventually before the year was over there was another death this time it was the
00:56:11
sister of one of the US radium dial painters whose sole contact with radium was sharing a bed with her that's it her
00:56:19
sister are you serious sharing a bed with her and she died nothing happened to the the sister who was working there
00:56:26
she was also going through it oh oh my God but just sharing a bed with her she never had Direct contact with r was
00:56:32
enough to to kill her oh due to the growing number of problems with the staff and the decline in demand for the
00:56:39
product in 1926 us radium ceased production enclos the plants in New Jersey and mov their entire operation to
00:56:46
New York but by then the damage had been done and it was becoming unavoidable the
00:56:52
previous year former dial painter Grace frier was one of those who the medical examiner had detected radiation in and
00:57:00
connected that to her mysterious illnesses that were cropping up and she wanted answers she wasn't going to stay
00:57:06
quiet not just for herself but she said but for her friends who had become ill and sometimes died yeah Dr Harrison
00:57:13
martland had confirmed that their illnesses had something to do with their jobs but whether or not there was any
00:57:18
negligence involved was something he couldn't prove by himself right Grace on the other hand had begun to suspect that
00:57:26
her bosses at us radium had actually known a great deal more than they had let on and we're going to Great Lengths
00:57:32
to cover it up oh yeah in fact when she was first informed that she was sick Grace recalled a day early in her job at
00:57:38
the plant where Von sash shaki had explicitly told her not to put the brush in her mouth because it would make her
00:57:47
sick okay so for however long totally fine everything's great don't worry about it safe as can be nothing happen
00:57:57
to you stick it in there it's fine B and then right as she gets sick he's like you shouldn't put that in your mouth
00:58:05
it's like huh why has it been fine up until this point sir and she said if he knew there was danger in ingesting the
00:58:12
radium dust and paint why had he allowed it to happen for so long right so a few
00:58:17
months later Grace asked Von saki that very question but aside from ashamedly muttering something about how he'd
00:58:24
warned other members of the corpor operation of the risk he offered no explanation wow so she literally was
00:58:31
like why did you let everybody do that if you've known that and he was like oh I tried to tell them money I think but
00:58:38
yeah according to Kate Moore Von shaki would later claim that he raised his concerns to the board of directors and
00:58:45
management but quote was opposed by members of the corporation who had charge of the
00:58:50
personel sure so no matter what way you shake it out [ __ ] either way all the way a shitty company for years Grace
00:58:59
frier had been suffering from mysterious illnesses with no cure and would certainly honestly most certainly die at
00:59:08
a very young age because of them absolutely and now after receiving confirmation that the illness was
00:59:13
definitely a direct result not just of negligence but of outright deceit and abuse on the part of her employer she
00:59:20
was [ __ ] pissed so over the course of the following year she started talking with her friends and former co-workers
00:59:27
and was like let's file a [ __ ] lawsuit against this [ __ ] company because again it's not just
00:59:34
negligence it's deceit and abuse like they did this intentionally so the problem was though
00:59:41
that it was unclear whether New Jersey labor laws would cover their damage claims since they had begun so many
00:59:46
years earlier wow also while there was some evidence to suggest the company knew about the risks they would have to
00:59:53
prove that in court which wasn't going to be super that's regardless of the challenge that
00:59:58
was ahead of them Grace and the others pressed the [ __ ] on and after 2 years they finally found a lawyer that was
01:00:05
willing to take on the case nice in May 1927 Grace F frier filed a suit against us radium which she was joined with four
01:00:14
other former painters Edna husman Katherine sha Kint McDonald and Albina Larice in their petition frier and the
01:00:23
other women asked for $125,000 in damages which is like nothing considering what they were going
01:00:28
through exactly but lawyers on behalf of us radium argued that the statute of limitations had long expired on their CR
01:00:35
claim which was true as the state's law was written it's like dudes you know what you did you're huge corporation
01:00:42
with I'm sure millions of [ __ ] dollars give these girls some money so that they can literally pay their
01:00:48
medical bills literally now undeterred the now referred to in the press as they this is when they got the the uh name
01:00:58
radium girls Okay so the radium girls petitioned the New Jersey Supreme Court to expand the statute of limitation for
01:01:05
workplace negligent claims arguing quote the harmful effect of radioactive substances on workers May set in from 1
01:01:13
to 18 years after exposure to that substance wow it can take that long so that's why that statue of limitations is
01:01:20
[ __ ] so by the time the court date arrived in January 1928 two of the women had become bedridden oh Grace was unable
01:01:28
to walk and required a back brace in order to sit up she was one of the ones whose like Verte had like basically
01:01:36
disintegrated and quote none could raise their arms to even take the oath none of
01:01:42
them that's how sick they were none of them could even raise an arm like this oh my God mhm under the circumstances
01:01:50
the court date was pushed back to April at which time a number of medical experts and scientists testified on
01:01:57
behalf of frier and the others explaining the effects of radiation on the body and how it had caused the
01:02:03
specific illnesses in the five women who'd brought the suit despite all this and despite the absolute urgency in the
01:02:09
fact that two of them are now bedridden and none of them can even raise their hand to take the oath like the their
01:02:16
health is frail is not even wor deteriorating lawyers for us radium successfully petitioned to have the case
01:02:28
postponed until September you want to know why cuz they were hoping these girl everybody ready
01:02:35
nope you want you all I want everyone to hold on for this answer they wanted to postpone this case
01:02:42
to September because quote several us radium Witnesses are vacationing in Europe that checks so this these women
01:02:53
are actively dying actively dying and they want to move it further out so that these [ __ ] pieces
01:03:03
of [ __ ] can finish vacation vacationing in Europe we don't want we don't want to
01:03:08
mess up their vacations sh who profited off all of the work that these girls did
01:03:16
and they're now suffering from wow wow wow wow I'm so mad right now oh my God what by then the case of the radium
01:03:28
girls had received a lot of national coverage and the judge's decision to postpone this case was met with public
01:03:38
outrage yeah I mean like yeah no problem I'll wait until you're done with your yacht no problem sounds good because
01:03:46
people the public had started to see these women the five women as symbolic of the ways in which the working class
01:03:52
were being exploited by corporations yep not only but people are buying these products I want to see Justice here
01:04:00
right given the interest in the story frier and the others used the opportunity to plead their case to the
01:04:06
public and granted interviews in which they told their story good frier told the reporter I have had 19 operations
01:04:14
but my doctors tell me there is no hope oh my God in each interview Grace gave details about her illness and how the
01:04:21
negligence and recklessness of us radium had affected her life and was going to end her life life mhm she said the worst
01:04:27
part of the whole thing is that I don't dare do much with my hands for fear of being scratched the least scratch will
01:04:33
not heals because of the radium so she can't even do anything cuz she's so worried about getting a tiny scratch cuz
01:04:39
then if that she's done by late May three more former painters had joined the suit good amazing and we're now
01:04:47
pushing to have the trial moved up arguing that the plaintiffs might [ __ ] die before the case was called
01:04:52
in September so sorry that you're busy on your [ __ ] Europe in vacation my literal life depends on this just Days
01:05:00
Later Vice Chancellor John bakus ruled that the statute of limitations was not applicable in this case and the suit
01:05:07
should be allowed to move forward quickly good he said my own opinion is that the statute of limitations did not
01:05:13
run from the time the girls took this poison into their systems but from the time of the injury and in my opinion the
01:05:19
statute of limitation does not apply until the period of injury ends great which like hell yeah backus's opinion
01:05:27
didn't end with his opinions on the statute alone he also addressed the trial delay rather than continue waiting
01:05:33
on the case which would be likely held to previous standards bakus suggested you know what girlies why don't you drop
01:05:40
this existing case File a new one file that new one that's going to be held to the new [ __ ] so file another one drop
01:05:48
this like get out of there among other things a new case would have been aided significantly by the information that
01:05:54
had come to light during the review of the statute of limitations including the fact that managers at the US radium
01:06:00
Corporation had quote in setting up the plea of the statute of limitations essentially confessed that they had been
01:06:07
guilty of the wrongs of which the defendants claimed yeah gu it's just that times run out and now you can use
01:06:13
this yeah cuz guess what baby that statute of limitations doesn't exist anymore but your statements do yep still
01:06:20
there still there while the courts and lawyers for both sides fought in court the victims continued their campaign to
01:06:26
keep the story in the Press they wanted people to keep hearing about this a few days after the limitations ruling was
01:06:32
made Catherine sha made a surprising offer to the doctors and scientists studying the effects of radium poisoning
01:06:39
now Grace frier I'll tell you the author don't offer don't worry but Grace frier
01:06:43
had previously offered she had offered her body for study after her death wow she had said when I die you can take it
01:06:51
to study for radium poisoning but as one doctor put it that we examine her body after death would not do so much for
01:06:58
medical science as a living specimen okay they're like that's great like wonderful absolutely but like it's not
01:07:05
going to do what we need it to do essentially and given that Katherine sha offered herself as a living specimen
01:07:13
what telling reporters I am willing with my fullest confidence in the doctors to
01:07:18
undergo experiments that may save the other girls wow Catherine I just got chill
01:07:26
chills yeah I'm I have Goosebumps all the way up my arms my legs have Goosebumps even Catherine CH wow what an
01:07:33
incredible human not even knowing what like what these experiments could do to her but if
01:07:39
they were going to save one of her friends or somebody who had gone through what she had exactly that's amazing now
01:07:45
between bis's ruling in the statute case and the ongoing and very much intensifying public support of the
01:07:51
victims officials from us radium saw that uh the wind was not blowing in their favor here and the odds were
01:07:58
definitely not in their favor the wind was not blowing through the sails of their European sailboats exactly with
01:08:04
just days to go before the start of the new trial lawyers for us radium reached out to Grace and the other women with a
01:08:11
settlement offer yeah how much in exchange for dropping the lawsuit they offered a $10,000 lumpsum payment and
01:08:19
$600 a year for the rest of their lives to that I would say suck my dick now the
01:08:25
like we just you know as Ash just said so eloquently the settlement was uh hardly
01:08:33
what had been asked for in the lawsuits but given that none of them were likely to live much longer which is very
01:08:40
upsetting all five agreed it would be better to get some resolution than to die with no one being held accountable
01:08:46
and to spend the like the rest of their lives fighting this unfortunately complely understandable by settling out
01:08:52
of court US radium had no obligation to take responsibility for or even acknowledge their role in any of this
01:08:59
WOW uh in response to the settlement US radium's president Clarence Lee gave a statement to the press in which he said
01:09:08
we unfortunately gave work to a great many people who were physically unfit to procure employment in other lines of
01:09:14
Industry cripples and persons similarly incapacitated were engaged what was then
01:09:20
considered an act of kindness on our part has been turned against us are you f [ __ ] joshing me bro get be so for
01:09:30
real Clarence be so [ __ ] for real you got I just hit my microphone with anger you got to tell me that Karma got one of
01:09:39
these [ __ ] Clarence that statement sent me into [ __ ] Oblivion like I don't we were nice enough to give
01:09:47
you a job and you're annoyed because your jaws falling off cuz you're physically unfit to do it and it's like
01:09:54
joking I oh boy Karma's going to get you now by the mid 1930s all five of the radium
01:10:03
girls had died without hearing a single word of apology from the company who taken literally everything from them
01:10:12
their lives not one [ __ ] breath of an apology why not one mother [ __ ] a yeah are you joking not one breath of a
01:10:25
ology that makes me so [ __ ] angry I need to know when they got shut down I need to know well the settlement in the
01:10:32
US radium case turned out to be just the beginning oh wow and other suits followed around the country good in
01:10:38
Ottawa Illinois Katherine Donahue and several other former painters filed suit against the radium dial company based in
01:10:45
alligations very similar to the one in the New Jersey case and by then the girls who were once known as local
01:10:51
celebrities for their work with radium paint had become known in the press as quot the Society of the Living Dead oh
01:10:58
my God and that was given to them that moniker for their like deformities and illnesses that's a quote wow like Grace
01:11:07
frier and the painters from us radium Donnie Hugh and the others in Illinois spent years looking for a lawyer to even
01:11:14
take on the case before they finally found someone to represent them ultimately the women won but it was at
01:11:21
what Kate Moore who we again we will uh cite in the in the show notes called quote great personal cost at the time
01:11:29
Ottawa was a you know kind of like a it's a company town is what it's called which is a town built around a single
01:11:36
company MH and few people were reluctant to take on or even question radium dial
01:11:42
because a lot of people still relay relied on them for their paycheck their livings and uh Morris said the town
01:11:48
didn't really want to acknowledge what had happened and there's evidence I've seen in their letters that the radium
01:11:54
girls that like the whistleblowers essentially that their neighbors the clergy and business people kind of
01:12:01
shunned them wow the clergy their [ __ ] Church shunned them because they spoke up about like dying
01:12:11
from radium pain that is so ass backwards like what the [ __ ] isn't there a whole bit in the Bible about community
01:12:17
and like love th neighbor to me like that they could turn on them it's not love thy Corporation [ __ ] It's Love
01:12:23
Thy Neighbor I think exactly I think and even though they won their cases the awards were relatively small in the end
01:12:31
with the company paying out $10,000 in total to the victims which is probably a nickel as far as they're concerned
01:12:38
nothing for the victims of the radium extraction plants around the country the legal and financial victories were
01:12:44
definitely small and most died truly agonizing deaths in the few years that followed but still the truth about
01:12:52
radium and the abuses of companies like us radium and radium dial had gotten out
01:12:57
they had they had gotten people to hear these things and without them nobody would have known in in Illinoi Congress
01:13:04
passed the occupational disease act as a direct result of Donahue and the others
01:13:09
taking their story to the public and New Jersey um occupational St safety standards were changed as a result of
01:13:16
the radium girls it was all because of them including a provision requiring all radium dial painters to be provided with
01:13:23
complete protective gear and in 1949 Congress passed a bill making occupational disease like those
01:13:30
experienced by the dial painters something able to be compensated for and considerably extended the federal
01:13:37
statute of limitations employees had to file a claim good all because of them wow despite all that the country had
01:13:44
come to learn about radium in the 1920s and 30s radium paint was still used in manufacturing as late as 1960s shut the
01:13:52
[ __ ] up albe it with far more safety precautions in place but still still according to the New Jersey Department
01:13:59
of Environmental Protection the number of people harmed or killed by radium paint is unknown but quote it is
01:14:06
estimated that over several decades approximately 4,000 women around the country worked as dial
01:14:12
painters now to this day places like Orange New Jersey and Ottawa Illinois struggle with the legacy of radium
01:14:19
extraction plants like us radium and radium dial decades later large sections of land on which the factories were
01:14:26
sitting oh I didn't even think of that they've been deemed superf fun sites which is a place where hazardous
01:14:32
materials were carelessly produced or stored or dumped I didn't even think of that wow I didn't either and in many
01:14:39
cases the toxins that were produced on superf fun sites seep into the groundwater spre and contaminate other
01:14:46
natural resources which put residents at risk for cancer other maladies who knows
01:14:52
somebody get Aaron Brockovich up in here that's all I could think oh my God that's all I could think of I
01:14:57
love that movie I do too for decades following their deaths the story of the radium girls has found its way back to
01:15:03
the public eye many times over through like books plays other cultural Productions but unfortunately the
01:15:10
companies responsible for those deaths were never truly held accountable [ __ ] and the contributions of
01:15:17
the women themselves has vastly gone overlooked yeah in the long R like if you really look at it but finally in the
01:15:24
summer of 2021 you're joking yeah senators in New Jersey Connecticut and Illinois put
01:15:30
forth a bill to formerly recognize the lives and sacrifices made by these women good New Jersey Senator moob Bob
01:15:37
Menendez told the press a century after the first radium girls started working in factories in New Jersey Connecticut
01:15:44
and Illinois We Stand today to recognize their plight and the contributions of these courageous women to Modern
01:15:50
workplace standard safety standards and Senator Richard Blumenthal of icut echoed that sentiment he said this
01:15:58
resolution honors the radium girl's determined Relentless fight for justice throughout the 20th century after being
01:16:04
deceived and misled about the risks of their to their health and safety hundreds of workers suffered mysterious
01:16:10
Health complications and even died the radium girls effort to hold corporations accountable for their callous uncaring
01:16:17
treatment of their employees pave the way for future workplace safety standards saving the lives of countless
01:16:23
others we honor their memor by continuing to fight for the safety and rights of workers everywhere that's
01:16:29
incredible and that is the story of the radium girls it's just so crazy that this is like I I had heard of this
01:16:36
before but only from you I'm pretty sure like that's something we should learn about in school absolutely like I didn't
01:16:42
learn about them in school no and I feel like we should yeah that would made chemistry a whole lot more interesting
01:16:48
let me tell you that's what I'm saying wow and just like the the sacrifice that they
01:16:55
it's it's an unbelievable story like it is cuz you just can't believe it was like the the
01:17:04
book that I reference many times by Kate Moore is called the radium girls it's a
01:17:08
phenomenal book I highly suggest It Go Get It Like It's really really fascinating yeah we I think we have it
01:17:16
up here actually somewhere um it's a phenomenal book it's so sad fascinating there's a movie toting yeah there is a
01:17:24
radium Girls movie I want to watch it now um yeah I I'm telling you the story is just the further you get into it the
01:17:31
more it will anger you it will make you sad it'll make you like inspired by these women like it's it's got
01:17:39
everything it's all the pieces seriously and the fact that these girls were like
01:17:45
[ __ ] no like Grace no Catherine sha is like no like Donnie Hue like they're all just like
01:17:52
nope you're not getting away with this and even if we die because of it we're going to make sure that you can't do
01:17:58
this to somebody else good for them like badasses wow what a horrifying tale truly hor I that's why I said I know
01:18:04
this is like a different it's a it's so true crime that's a [ __ ] crime if I ever heard one it's a crime for sure
01:18:11
it's just a different kind I I like when we do like obviously I like all the stuff that we do but I love the dark
01:18:16
history ones I just they're F dark history is my favorite and thing to read about yeah and there's so much that has
01:18:22
happened in this world that you don't like we don't know about or you don't learn in school that my God I would have
01:18:28
done better in school yeah like oh okay I'll apply myself to this like this is fascinating and horrifying all at once
01:18:36
but yeah and I think um I want to say the last radium girl when I was reading about it she died at which I was shocked
01:18:44
by um I like one of the ones who was like in the factories was like 104 waa yeah she lived like very long which her
01:18:53
have effects uh I'm not not sure about her it was back in like I want to say like 2014 or something crazy some people
01:19:00
had effects and some didn't and then knowing that you worked in a in a plant like that and then watching women that
01:19:07
you worked with and then you're just sitting there I'm sure wondering when is this going to happen to me yeah like
01:19:12
when is my tooth going to fall out and then it the rest is just done like I I just saw um I on Tik Tok I saw bunny
01:19:21
there we love bunny a which also she shouted us out on her and shot myself essentially she was talking about how
01:19:27
she they found like a small aneurism in her cored artery opinion and they don't think it
01:19:34
is but she described it and perfectly how I think these girls must have felt she she described it as walking around
01:19:40
with a grenade in her head yeah and that's exactly like like that hit for me when I because I was reading this at the
01:19:47
same time and I was like these girls must have walked around seeing what's happening like you said to all their
01:19:52
co-workers and Friends and feeling like they're walking around with a grenade inside of them that's just going to when
01:19:59
is it going to explode yep when is it going to happen no that's oh my God any kind of minor tooth pain you're probably
01:20:05
like oh my God like this is happening like anything or you know like when you when you hear about something and you're
01:20:09
like do I feel that yes like like phantom pain you hear about like an aneurysm or you hear about like a brain
01:20:15
tumor and all of a sudden you got a small headache or something and you're like oh my God is this
01:20:20
that wow it's a wild T Elena Jesus thank you wow yeah well we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird
01:20:32
but it's so weird that you employ a bunch of girls and tell them yeah it's totally fine to eat [ __ ] radium and
01:20:35
nothing will happen to you and then you know full well that that actually is going to do something to them and you
01:20:41
say oh I'm so sorry um I will totally appear in the court case but I just have to go on my yacht first suck a dick
01:20:48
truly bye said eloquently by Ash [Music] [Music]