The owners and scientists at US Radium, familiar with the real hazards of radioactivity, naturally took extensive precautions to protect themselves. Cause for concern was further reduced by the fact that radium was being marketed as a medical elixir for treating all manner of ailments. The glowing paint was completely flavorless, and the supervisors assured them that rosy cheeks would be the only physical side effect to swallowing the radium-laced pigment. After a few strokes a brush tended to lose its shape, so the women’s managers encouraged them to use their lips and tongues to keep the tips of the camel hair brushes sharp and clean. They were required to paint delicate lines with fine-tipped brushes, applying the Undark to the tiny numbers and indicator hands of wristwatches. Few companies at that time were willing to employ women, and the pay was much higher than most alternatives, so the company had little trouble finding employees to occupy the rows and rows of desks. US Radium employed hundreds of women at their factory in Orange, New Jersey, including Grace Fryer. By this time the dangers of radium were better understood, but US Radium assured the public that their paint used the radioactive element in “such minute quantities that it is absolutely harmless.” While this was true of the products themselves, the amount of radium present in the dial-painting factory was much more dangerous, unbeknownst to the workers there. They also marketed the pigment for non-military products such as house numbers, pistol sights, light switch plates, and glowing eyes for toy dolls. Hammer’s recipe was used by the US Radium Corporation during the First World War to produce Undark, a high-tech paint which allowed America’s infantrymen to read their wristwatches and instrument panels at night. Hammer went on to combine his radium salt with glue and a compound called zinc sulfide which glowed in the presence of radiation. Radioactivity was somewhat new to science, so its properties and dangers were not well understood but the radium’s slight blue-green glow and natural warmth indicated that it was clearly a fascinating material.
The famous scientists Pierre and Marie Curie had provided him with some samples of their radium salt crystals. Hammer left Paris with a curious souvenir. In 1902, twenty years prior to Grace’s mysterious ailment, inventor William J. One dentist in particular took notice of the unusually high number of deteriorated jawbones among local women, and it took very little investigation to discover a common thread all of the women had been employed by the same watch-painting factory at one time or another.
#Radium dress series
Her jawbone was honeycombed with small holes, in a random pattern reminiscent of moth-eaten fabric.Īs a series of doctors attempted to solve Grace’s mysterious ailment, similar cases began to appear throughout her hometown of New Jersey.
Using a primitive X-ray machine, the physician discovered serious bone decay, the likes of which he had never seen. Her troubles were compounded when her jaw became swollen and inflamed, so she sought the assistance of a doctor in diagnosing the inexplicable symptoms. In 1922, a bank teller named Grace Fryer became concerned when her teeth began to loosen and fall out for no discernible reason.
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