When Glow-in-the-Dark Dreams Turned Deadly.

Radium Girls

In the early 20th century, America’s fascination with progress and science shone with the discovery of radium. This glowing atomic element, which was believed to have miraculous health benefits, found its way into everything from beauty creams to watches. At the center of this phenomenon were hundreds of young women known as the Radium Girls, who worked in factories painting luminous dials for clocks and instruments. What appeared to be a glamorous, well-paying job quickly became one of the darkest chapters in labor history.

Beginning in the 1910s, women employed by companies like the United States Radium Corporation in New Jersey and the Radium Dial Company in Illinois were instructed to shape their paintbrushes to fine points using their lips, a practice called “lip-pointing”. Unaware of the radioactive danger, they ingested small amounts of radium daily. Soon, their bodies began to grotesquely deteriorate: jaws crumbled, teeth fell out, and bones fractured without cause. Yet, when they sought medical help, their illnesses were dismissed or misdiagnosed.

The turning point came when a handful of these women, among them Grace Fryer, Katherine Schaub, and Quinta McDonald, refused to succumb to their situation and stay silent. Despite facing powerful corporations and a society hesitant to believe working-class women, they filed lawsuits in the late 1920s. Their courage led to groundbreaking legal precedents in workplace safety and employer accountability.

The Radium Girls’ story changed more than labor law; it reshaped how science and gender intersected in the workplace. It exposed how women’s bodies were treated as expendable in the pursuit of industrial progress and forced the U.S. government to implement stricter safety standards for radiation and toxic materials.

Today, the glow of their story is no longer from radium but from the light of justice they ignited, one that still protects workers around the world.