The Radium Girls is a powerful yet poignant 400-plus page-turner I couldn’t put down once I began reading. The Curies newly discovered wonder “drug” radium shone brightly in the otherwise bleak years of WWI. Author Kate Moore provides gut-wrenching details of the lives of the hundreds of young girls who labored innocently in the almost magical glowing environment of radium-dial factories.
Since the smallest pocket watch painted measured only 3.5 centimeters across its face (meaning the tiniest element for painting was a single millimeter in width) and since the girls were forbidden to go outside those edges, they resorted to making their slim camel-hair brushes even finer the only way they knew how—by putting the brushes in their mouths.
The technique called “lip pointing” proved to be their downfall as they began to experience devastating—and inexplicable—conditions (mandibular necrosis, dental abscesses which never healed, sarcomas, stillbirths). The author then chronicles these “shining girls” as they struggle with their relentless physical (and mental) demons as well as their egregious employers who denied any role in their plights. Despite its length, The Radium Girls was an easy read enlightening on scientific and humanitarian levels.
Stanley Hartness, M.D.