![]() The court dismissed the corporation’s motion and set the trial, at last, for June 8 in federal district court in Manhattan. The judges in Newark’s chancery court found the plaintiff’s argument, the image of those irreversibly radioactive bones absolutely plausible. But this minute, even, all five were still exhaling radon gas, and the radium in their bones was still killing them. Yes, the suit was three years old, and, yes, the women had left those dial painting jobs years earlier. The workers should have come to court when they were actually exposed to radium, not now, years later, when they no longer had jobs with the U.S. ![]() This time they proposed that the statute of limitations had run out on the plaintiffs’ injuries. And the company lawyers, even now in the spring of 1928, had found another argument for dismissing the complaint. Thirteen other dial workers, including Schaub’s cousin, had died in the three years since the lawsuit was filed. “If I won my $250,000, mightn’t I have lots of roses?” Katherine Schaub’s jaws were starting to break apart as she told her lawyers, she hoped the money – they were asking $250,000 each – would pay for her funeral. Both of Quinta’s hips had fractured Albina was bedridden, one of her legs was now four inches shorter than the other Edna Hussman could barely shuffle across her room oddly, years after leaving the factory, her hair still glowed in the dark Grace Fryer now worked in a bank with a metal brace from neck to hips to support her spine. Two of them, Quinta MacDonald and Albina Larice, were sisters of the dead woman whose bones had provided so much evidence in Gettler’s laboratory. By contrast, “Those (films) on which normal bones were placed are not shown, because they did not show any impression.” But from Amelia Maggia's remains, “every piece of bone, as well as every tissue ash that we examined, showed radioactivity by the photographic method.” And if a dead woman's bones still sparked with radiation, they had no doubt that the same could be said for the bones of the still living dial painters.Īs the lawsuit dragged on, the Radium Girlsbecame sicker and sicker. ![]() The published photographs – those of the dial painter’s bones - showed a dazzle of pale spots, starred against a black background, as unmistakable as the glitter of a constellation on a dark night. The bone, tissue and film packages were left to sit for ten days in a sealed darkroom with the idea that “If radioactive, the bones and the tissue ash would emit rays, and the beta and gamma rays would penetrate the black paper and affect the photographic film.” Then, for comparison, they went through the same process with pieces of washed bone and tissue from a normal corpse. The prepared bones and the tissue ash were then taken into a darkroom and placedonto x-ray films wrapped in black photographic paper. The bones were scrubbed, air-dried, the larger ones sawed into two inch pieces. They boiled a selection of bones - skull, five cervical vertebrae, five slices of rib, both feet, femurs, the right tibia, the right fibula - for hours in a solution of washing soda. They scraped away the shreds of remaining tissue from the bones they burned those scraps into ash. It was one of the scientific miracles of a very optimistic age.The New York City scientists methodically set about figuring out how to testan aging skeleton for evidence of a little understood radioactive element. Mixed with the right kind of paint, radium would luminesce after exposure to light, so that a watch face painted with the stuff could soak up energy during the day and stay visible all night long. Throughout the early 20th century, hundreds of thousands of people drank radium-infused tonic water, brushed their teeth with radium toothpaste, and wore radium cosmetics that gave their skin a bright, cheery glow. The conventional wisdom at the time, however, was that a little bit of the stuff was good for human health. The Curies were working with large quantities of pure radium. Pierre once said he couldn’t bear the thought of sharing a room with even a kilogram of the stuff because he was afraid it would blind him and burn off his skin. Marie gave herself several unpleasant burns improperly handling radium. ![]() Right away, the couple knew their discovery was dangerous. Though Pierre and Marie Curie had first identified the element in 1898, it wasn’t until 1910 that Marie successfully isolated a sample of it to work with. The radium-infused paint was a new invention in 1917. Getty Images Pierre and Marie Curie in 1905.
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