They Were Told the Paint Was Harmless
The US Radium Corporation knew radium was harming its workers in 1925 — and suppressed the findings. Five women sued in 1927. Each received $10,000. Their case helped establish the right to sue for occupational disease.
THE FILM IS IN PRODUCTION.
It is 1917. Orange, New Jersey. The United States Radium Corporation employs up to 300 young women to paint luminous dials on wristwatches and military instruments. They use a paint called Undark — radium dissolved in zinc sulfide. They are taught a technique: lip, dip, paint. Put the brush on your lips to form a fine point. Then touch the radium paint. Repeat, every minute of every day.
In 1925, the company commissioned a study. They hired Dr. Frederick Flinn of Columbia University — an industrial toxicologist on US Radium's own payroll, not a licensed physician. He examined Grace Fryer and reported that her health was, quote, as good as his own. A separate Harvard investigation (the Drinker study, commissioned 1924) had already found evidence of harm. Those findings were suppressed and misrepresented by the company. The internal tests that said otherwise were not shown to the workers.
In 1927, five of the women sued in the New Jersey Court of Chancery: Grace Fryer, Edna Hussman, Katherine Schaub, Quinta McDonald, Albina Larice. The press called them the Radium Girls. According to contemporary newspaper accounts, Flinn testified in the New Jersey Court of Chancery that he found no evidence of occupational disease.
Also in 1927: Amelia Maggia, who had died in 1922 — cause of death recorded as syphilis — was exhumed from her grave on October 15. Her bones were radioactive. They exposed photographic film in the dark. Her jaw had disintegrated before her death; dentist Joseph Knef had removed it and first tested it in 1922. The syphilis diagnosis had been wrong.
The settlement was reached June 8, 1928. Each woman received $10,000 and a $600 annual annuity, plus $12 per week for life and all medical and legal expenses paid. At least one of the plaintiffs could not stand to receive it.
The verdict: PART BS. The story is not false. The records are real. The part that is BS is the idea that justice arrived. Each woman received $10,000 — a fraction of the $250,000 they had sought — while many were still dying. The company admitted no liability. Their case helped establish a worker's right to sue for occupational disease, and it became a reference point for the labor-safety laws that followed. Grace Fryer never recovered. She did not live to see those laws.
The receipts are at bskiller.com/reels.
Every claim in the film, checked against the record.
The full receipts — every claim, every source, checked against the record — are for BSKiller members. That is the whole point of the show: the receipts.