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The case was eventually settled in 1926 and several more suits were brought against the company in 1927 by Grace Fryer and Katherine Schaub. Radium by the so-called Radium Girls, starting with former dial painter Marguerite Carlough in 1925. The ingestion of the paint by the women, brought about while licking the brushes, resulted in a condition called radium jaw (radium necrosis), a painful swelling and porosity of the upper and lower jaws that ultimately led to many of their deaths. Unbeknownst to the women, the paint was highly radioactive and therefore, carcinogenic. Radium's management and scientists took precautions such as masks, gloves, and screens, but did not similarly equip the workers. Radium Crystallization Laboratory, Orange, NJ Several workers died, and the health risks associated with radium were allegedly known, but this company continued dial painting operations until 1940.

It soon moved its dial painting operation to Ottawa, Illinois to be closer to its major customer, the Westclox Clock Company. Around 1920, a similar radium dial business, known as the Radium Dial Company, a division of the Standard Chemical Company, opened in Chicago.

Īt the time, the dangers of radiation were not well understood. The delicate task of painting watch and gauge faces was done mostly by young women, who were instructed to maintain a fine tip on their paintbrushes by licking them. During World War I, demand for dials, watches, and aircraft instruments painted with Undark surged, and the company expanded operations considerably. The company's luminescent paint, marketed as Undark, was a mixture of radium and zinc sulfide the radiation causing the sulfide to fluoresce. The ore was obtained from "Undark mines" in Paradox Valley, Colorado and in Utah.Ī notable employee from 1921 to 1923 was Victor Francis Hess, who would later receive the Nobel Prize in Physics. Radium facility processed half a ton of ore per day. In Orange, where radium was extracted from 1917 to 1926, the U.S. In August 1921, von Sochocky was forced from the presidency, and the company was renamed the United States Radium Corporation. Over the next several years, it opened facilities in Newark, Jersey City, and Orange. The company produced uranium from carnotite ore and eventually moved into the business of producing radioluminescent paint, and then to the application of that paint. Willis, as the Radium Luminous Material Corporation. The company was founded in 1914 in New York City, by Dr. Lawyer Edward Markley was in charge of defending the company in these cases. Radium workers, especially women who painted the dials of watches and other instruments with luminous paint, suffered serious radioactive contamination. During World War I and World War II, the company produced luminous watches and gauges for the United States Army for use by soldiers. The workers had been told that the paint was harmless. After initial success in developing a glow-in-the-dark radioactive paint, the company was subject to several lawsuits in the late 1920s in the wake of severe illnesses and deaths of workers (the Radium Girls) who had ingested radioactive material. The United States Radium Corporation was a company, most notorious for its operations between the years 1917 to 1926 in Orange, New Jersey, in the United States that led to stronger worker protection laws. Cadmium, Radium-228, radon, radionuclide, Thorium-230, Thorium-232, Uranium-234, Uranium-235, Uranium-238, Vanadium(V) oxide