Radium Girls: Dark Story Of Shining Women

Excellent livre, très bien écrit. Je ne me suis pas ennuyée une seule seconde ! Je recommande !

Als die “Radium Girls” ihre tägliche Ration mit radiumhältiger Leuchtfarbe bemalter Armbanduhren herstellten, gab es in Amerika noch kaum einen gesetzlichen Schutz für Arbeitnehmer, die an berufsbedingten Leiden erkrankten. Niemand kümmerte sich darum, als den Frauen die Zähne ausfielen, die Kieferknochen bröckelten, Mund, Zunge und Schlund von Geschwüren zerfressen wurden, ihre Beine ungleich lang wurden. Ärzte, die keine Ahnung hatten, was Radium wirklich bewirkte, schrieben alle möglichen Verlegenheitsdiagnosen in die Totenscheine. Anwälte, an die die Kranken sich wandten, zuckten die Achseln. Wie beweisen, dass das angeblich so gesunde, erfrischende, jungmachende radium, dieser “trinkbare Sonnenschein”, dieses “Jugendelixier” nach Jahren seine teuflische Wirkung entfalten würde, indem es von innen heraus die Knochen zerstörten? Nicht einmal Marie Curie (die daran starb) glaubte daran. Der Konzern, bei dem die Frauen angestellt gewesen waren, kämpfte mit einer unglaublichen Brutalität und Menschenverachtung um jeden Fußbreit Boden, obwohl sogar der Begründer der Firma daran gestorben war. Alle juristischen Tricks, aller Zynismus, alle Gemeinheit wurde ins Feld geworfen, um die Klägerinnen hinzuhalten, bis sie von selber sterben würden. Ein Anwalt, der sich um sie annahm, warf das Handtuch; ließ sich vom Konzern einen Knebelvertrag abringen. Ein anderer war mutiger. Er gewann den Kampf gegen eine mächtige, politische einflussreiche Firma mit unbegrenzten finanziellen Möglichkeiten. Die “Ghost Girls”, wie man sie wegen ihrer im Dunkeln sichtbaren grünlichen Aura nannte, erhielten ihr Recht – und die Gesetze zum Schutz der Arbeitnehmer wurden geändert.

Awesome book! Educational & very heartfelt sad real life story! I wish I had purchased the actual paper book! 📕 😥

This is an extremely well written account of the lives of the women who helped to change working conditions with dangerous chemicals forever.

The vile and atrocious actions of Radium Dial, what they did to these girls, how they tortured and murdered these girls, is repulsive and sickening. How this was allowed to happen for so many years is incomprehensible.

Forced to pay their own medical bills for years, while their bodies were literally falling apart, many were driven into financial ruin. Not just the girls themselves, but also husbands and parents, who gave all they had to get treatment for the girls. Homes were lost to pay medical bills, while all along Radium Dial was telling them the paint was safe, while still working hundreds of girls dipping brushes into radium paint and into their mouths.

“For almost six years, Radium Dial had known the women were radioactive. Yet the knowledge of the discoveries had been carefully concealed by the firm, who feared disruption of their business if the facts became known…the victims had not been informed of their condition, nor the cause, through fear of panic among the workers.”

The lives of these girls were held with no more regard by the company than one would hold for the life of a single ant, all the mattered was the money that was being made for them. Dr Flinn was the doctor who had been examining and testing the girls for the company, who declared many times that the girls were perfectly healthy.

“Dr. Flinn had been examining the girls: taking blood, reading their x-rays. He had been arranging medical treatment and writing to the women on the letter-headed paper of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. “[I] understood,” said Grace’s physician Dr. McCaffrey, who’d arranged her examination with Flinn, “that Dr. Flinn was an MD.”

It turns out that Dr. Flinn’s degree was in philosophy … this was who Radium Dial had taking care of the girls for many months, if not years

The absolute horror that these girls went through was exponentially increased later with physical exams. As per their settlement, the girls were first examined by the company doctor, the girls’ own doctor, and a mutually agreed upon doctor all working together. The girls were positive for radium, but two of the doctors thought there may be fraud by the girls, so they decided to re-do all of the exams, in a hotel room so the girls could be nude.

Only the company doctor, who did not believe radium poison existed, was present of the three appointed doctors. There were others in the room … a doctor who was a close friend of the vice president of Radium Dial who took charge, another random doctor, and also the vice president himself, who “assisted”. In a hotel room, with these poor girls nude, and these strange men were watching the examinations, pelvic exams included.

“The girls perceived at once that this was not an impartial exam, but what recourse did they have to stop it? It was part of their settlement that they would agree to medical procedures. And so they were forced to strip as directed and went through the tests with the company men watching all they did closely.”

These women, no matter how severe their suffering, no matter how advanced their condition, never stopped fighting.

“The researchers even went to the Cook County Hospital and brought back Charlotte Purcell’s amputated arm; they found it still in its formaldehyde crypt, saved through the decades due to its never-before-seen symptoms.”

“In 1963, perhaps at least partly in response to the research on the dial-painters, President Kennedy signed the international Limited Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited atomic tests above ground, underwater, and in outer space. Strontium-90, it had been determined, was too dangerous for humanity after all. The ban undoubtedly saved lives and, very possibly, the entire human race.”

What science learned from them has saved the lives of millions around the world, and is still saving people to this day … that is their legacy.

I’m very much looking forward to reading The Woman They Could Not Silence by this author.