FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SOURCE: Claudia Clark, (517) 774-3454
By Mike Silverthorn
HISTORIAN TRACES PLIGHT OF THE 'RADIUM GIRLS'
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich.--The federal government's recent attempts to settle claims relating to human radiation experiments during the Cold War doesn't address the problems of radium poisoning that occurred during the years before World War II.
The plight of a group of women known as the "radium girls," who from 1910 to 1935 found themselves among the first victims of radium poisoning, is the subject of a new book by Central Michigan University history professor Claudia Clark.
The women, hired to apply luminous, radium-laced paint to watch faces and instrument dials, developed mysterious, often fatal diseases that they traced to conditions in the workplace.
"These women at first had no idea that the tedious task of dialpainting was any different from other factory jobs available to them," said Clark. "Their fight to have their symptoms recognized as an industrial disease represents an important chapter in the history of modern health and labor policy.
"It's a very dramatic story involving companies hiring experts to cover up the issues, other people working to reveal what was being covered up, and a group of women trying desperately to gain control of their own lives," she said.
Soon after radium was discovered by Marie Curie in 1898, doctors and chemical companies attempted to create a health market for radium despite evidence of its dangers, said Clark. Radium was first seen as a remedy for rheumatoid arthritis and joint diseases and later as a treatment for wrinkles, gout, impotence, diabetes and other ailments.
By 1917, American companies were producing radium as a luminous agent for watches. By 1923, employees were dying from radium poisoning, said Clark.
The government's "discovery" of radium poisoning, however, was slow in coming, despite the efforts of the factory workers who "campaigned for the recognition, compensation and prevention of industrial radium poisoning," she said. Newspapers dubbed the workers "radium girls."
"This is really a story of who had power in early 20th century America," said Clark. "When rich consumers got sick, the federal government passed regulations. But the working class women who worked in the radium factories got no attention until they were allied with the reform-minded, middle class women of the Consumers' League, who pulled strings to make radium poisoning known.
"Their plight poses the question: Who has social authority to bring social problems to public knowledge?" she said.
In her book, Clark describes the social and political factors that influenced the responses of the workers, managers, government officials, medical specialists and legal authorities involved in the case. She also explores contemporary disputes over workplace control, government intervention and industry-backed medical research.
"People still die of occupational diseases," said Clark. "Workplace conditions continue to be a leading source of disease and death."
Clark specializes in the history of modern health and labor policy. Her book, "Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910-1935," was published by the University of North Carolina Press.
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For more information, contact:
Mike Silverthorn
Office of Public Relations & Marketing
Central Michigan University
(517) 774-3197
[email protected]
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