Episode 6: Radium Girls Part 2

The Bygone Society Show

In part one of Radium Girls, we found out that U.S. Radium Corporation in New Jersey commissioned an independent study to test the effects of chronic radium exposure, only after hundreds of young women working as dial painters fell ill and died.

The study’s results were clear: The workers were suffering and dying from radium poisoning. But U.S. Radium refused the findings, hiding the results from the public eye, and more importantly, from their own employees.

Instead, they conducted additional studies that ensured different, false findings that claimed radium was safe. They even went as far as to hire a Columbia University industrial toxicologist to pose as a physician and falsify the womens’ medical examinations, formally declaring they were experiencing an outbreak of syphilis.

There was little public and financial support for community health control programs when it came to treating venereal diseases. In America, syphilis was the scarlet letter of the early 1900s, much like AIDS in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

The scheme was meant to shame the women into silence.

But thanks to the tenacity of Grace Fryer and Catherine Donahue, these women eventually found their fighting voice.

I'm Kate Naglieri. Welcome to The Bygone Society Show.

Research, writing and hosting by Kate Naglieri
Production and sound by Jamie Eichhorn
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