Radium Girls Documentary

[Baco Noir]

ianmedium - This article from Quill and Pad has the full documentary of the radium girls at the bottom. I haven't watched it yet, but since we were discussing it the other day and it's a huge part of watch history, albeit a dark spot, I thought it was well worth sharing.

“Radium Watch Dials And Radium Girls: Who Would Have Thought ‘Eating’ Radioactive Material Was Deadly?”

quillandpad.com/2015/03/13/radium-watch-dials-and-radium-girls-who-would-have-thought-eating-radioactive-material-was-deadly/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=radium-watch-dials-and-radium-girls-who-would-have-thought-eating-radioactive-material-was-deadly

[aerome]

Read a very graphic article which included some tragic pictures about this some years ago. During the war efforts, the dials on all the aircraft instruments were painted with radium. Many of those workers had terrible cancers of the mouth, face, throat, etc. They use to wet the tips of the brushes with their mouths and tongues.

[rw16610]

Despite the extremely sad tone of the documentary it was very interesting to watch. The things that took place in history really make you wonder sometimes. The saddest part other than what those ladies were subjected to had to be the part with the little boy closer to the end... Hearing him describe the "surgical" procedure he was conscious for was literally painful to listen to. The level of ethics in business some folks have (or lack of) is simply disgusting. I remember reading this full story many years back on the Rolex forum and also feel it's an important piece of history for any watch enthusiast especially.

[Baco Noir]

I haven't seen the whole movie yet - only the first 20 min so far. That said, I think many of these kind of "exposures" are perpetrated by people with good intentions but no idea of the consequence. You have to think back to this time period and the limited amount of safety rules that were in place - primarily because a lot of the health effects were as yet unknown. I've been through one such case in my lifetime. Beryllium was used in nuclear weapons to enhance the yield of the blast. It was machined into spherical shapes to go along with the warhead and reflect or focus the energy of the chain reaction at ignition. There was no known health effect from it at the time, but years later many of the machinists came down with berylliosis - same effect as asbestosis. Severe and irreversible damage to the lungs. Now, there are controls in place to prevent it from happening again, but at the time - no one knew. Very said.

[ianmedium]

Thanks so much Roger, I am going to watch that this weekend and I agree with your thoughts completely.

[rw16610]

So true, Roger. Looking at it like that I can think back to a time when nobody knew the dangers of smoking. Like you say, it's still sad though and thankfully we're better protected now.