Earlier in 1925, he’d been hired by the Ethyl Corp. However, he also had a history of downplaying the hazards of industrial work. Flinn was an assistant professor of physiology at the Institute of Public Health at Columbia University. hired Frederick Flinn to investigate reports of mysterious illnesses among women who worked for the company. These early warnings were ignored or obscured. "Radium Girls" work in a factory of the United States Radium Corp., circa 1922. Public Health Service conducted a report that warned that radium workers should take precautions, even though the authors of the report were not yet certain radium was deadly. Serious ailments and deaths had been observed among women who worked with radium in New Jersey. Dozens more died at plants in New Jersey and Illinois.īy the time of the first Connecticut deaths, the dangers of radium poisoning were clear, or should have been. When her dentist pulled a tooth out, part of her jaw came with it and her mouth rotted to the point that she developed a hole in her cheek.ĭozens of other Connecticut women died of radium poisoning from working in Waterbury and other clock companies in Connecticut. First Splettscher developed anemia, then her teeth hurt. The lead-up to her death was horrifying (sensitive readers are forewarned here). In 1925 a Connecticut woman named Frances Splettscher died of radium poisoning. Within two decades she lost all her teeth, and over her life developed colon and breast cancer that she attributed to the work. She’d only worked with radium paint for a few months, but it already impacted her. She took that advice in the summer of 1924. One day she only earned 62 cents and was advised by her boss to transfer. She didn’t like to “lip-point” because the paint tasted bad, and she found the work tedious. in the 1920s were thrilled to get a job that paid well - 8 cents per painted watch dial - if you could paint fast. The young women who went to work at the Waterbury Clock Co. It would take years for its dangers to be fully understood.
In fact, many women would paint their nails and the buttons on their coats with radium for fun.Ī radioactive metal, radium was discovered in 1898 by Marie Skłodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre Curie. This made workers’ mouths glow but they didn’t mind. To get the paintbrush bristles into a fine point, Keane, who was just 18, was taught to “lip-point” by putting the tip of the brush between her lips and shaping it between brush strokes. The radium made the watches glow in the dark. in Connecticut in the 1920s, she was given the job of applying paint made with radium to the numbers on wristwatch dials. When Mae Keane started working at the Waterbury Clock Co. Daily Herald Archive/SSPL via Getty Images For many years, women painted clocks with paint containing radioactive radium, unknowingly putting their health - and lives - at risk.
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