CASE #Y2OOY6 · 2 entities · 1 connections

The Radium Girls

Factory workers were told to lick their paintbrushes to a fine point while painting watch dials with radioactive paint — the company's own hired doctor knew it was killing them and lied to their faces for years.

The Radium Girls were young female factory workers in the 1910s-1920s who developed severe radiation poisoning after being instructed to point their radium-paint brushes with their lips. Their subsequent legal fight against United States Radium Corporation and other employers, who had been warned of the danger and concealed it, established landmark occupational safety and labor law protections still in effect today.

✓documented

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Quick facts

→An estimated 4,000 workers, mostly young women, were employed painting radium-based luminous paint onto watch and clock dials at factories in New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut beginning around 1917.
→Workers were instructed to "lip-point" their brushes — placing them in their mouths to achieve a fine tip — directly ingesting radium with every stroke.
→Company-hired physician Frederick Flinn, who examined workers and repeatedly reassured them they were healthy, was later revealed to have no genuine medical degree and to have been specifically paid to produce reassuring findings.
→Surviving workers' 1920s lawsuits against their employers established significant new occupational disease and labor law precedent, and directly influenced U.S. Atomic Bomb Commission radiation safety standards during World War II.

Entities on file

Radium Girls (event)

Young female factory workers poisoned by radium dial paint in the 1910s-1920s; their lawsuits established landmark occupational safety law after a company-hired doctor concealed the danger.

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Frederick Flinn (person)

Company-hired physician who falsely reassured Radium Girls workers their illnesses were unrelated to radium exposure, despite lacking a genuine medical degree.

→ was paid to falsely reassure → Radium Girls✓documented

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