This fluke discovery occurred in 1988, when University of Illinois researchers told the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) that several Connecticut factories had been used for radium dial painting. But it also contains invisible, odorless radiation – a map of where Splettstocher and her coworkers mixed and spilled drops of radium paint with a half-life of 1,600 years. The massive Waterbury Clock complex on Cherry Street now holds other lives and other dreams, like the low-income Enterprise Apartments and New Opportunities for Waterbury (NOW), a human-services center largely focused on assisting the needy. “The suffering and deaths of these workers greatly increased the world’s knowledge of the hazards of radioactivity, ultimately saving countless lives of future generations, “ writes Ross Mullner, Author of “Deadly Glow”.ĭespite their contributions, the dial painters have largely been forgotten. Recognition of the dial workers came much later, when they helped scientists understand the long-term effects of radiation, and their suffering led to safety measures for World War II atomic-bomb workers. The tragedy received wide media attention in New Jersey and New York, but in Waterbury it was never reported, until the Observer published this story in 2002. The illustration above was published in the American Weekly Sunday newspaper. Workers in Waterbury, New Jersey and Illinois were poisoned while they painted luminous numbers on watches. Even when young women painting dials in Waterbury and places like Orange, New Jersey and Ottawa, Illinois, began to develop horrific symptoms, no one wanted to hear that radium was the cause. “These were the best jobs working-class girls could get.”īut some would pay for these jobs with their lives.Įven as Splettstocher and her friends bent over long workbenches painting dials, evidence was mounting that this naturally occurring radioactive element had a dark side. “They loved their jobs,” said Claudia Clark, author of a book about the dial-painters called “Radium Girls”. This didn’t bother the girls, who stole moments at work to paint their dress buttons and fingernails, and glowing rings on their fingers. The gritty-textured paint tasted no worse than Elmer’s glue, but it had a strange effect: It made their mouths glow in the dark. Many of the women pressed their brushes between their lips before dipping them in the radium-laced paint to give their small brushes a nice, fine point. World War I soldiers had worn the futuristic devices in the trenches, and now in peacetime everyone wanted one, so Splettstocher and dozens like her were hired to help produce millions of the watches during the early 1920s. The girls used their keen eyes and nimble fingers to paint tiny numbers on glow-in-the-dark watches that were all the rage at the moment. It was a glamorous job, for she and her young colleagues worked with radium – the wonder substance of the new century. It was 1921 when 17-year –old Frances Splettstocher landed a job at the Waterbury Clock Company on Cherry Street. (This article was first published The Waterbury Observer in September 2002) Image from the book "Deadly Glow - The Radium Dial Worker Tragedy." The workers, mostly young women, used their mouthes to form sharp points on the brush that they would dip in and out of radium paint. A dial painter suffered from radium-induced sarcoma of the chin.
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