While D.W. Gregory’s play may seem like an allegory warning of careless science, corporate greed, and the power of the individual, the history of radium, the US Radium Company, and the bravery of the Radium Girls continues to fascinate and horrify over a century later.
Discovered at the end of 1898 by Madame Curie, Radium as a marvel of modern science. Almost immediately, however, the dangers of radium exposure became known, when Pierre Curie exposed his arm to radium and received a burn which took months to heal.
Despite so much not being known, the profit potential of radium quickly drowned those voices advising caution. Less than 20 years after its discovery, this glow in the dark miracle appeared on watch faces and in cancer wards, but in everyday products such as milk, toothpaste, hair cream, and yes, even suppositories. Everyone wanted radium in everything and the girls, hired to work in these factories, were minor celebrities.
Girls as young as eleven flocked to these plants where their wages placed them in the top 3% of female wage earners in the early 20th century. Contrary to avoiding the glow in the dark substance, the radium girls found it endlessly fascinating, painting their nails, faces, and even wearing their best dresses to work so that they would sparkle when they went out at night.
To protect their profits, US Radium, and other corporations, created a cottage medical industry focused solely on proving how safe radium was. This led to falsified studies, bribed officials, and phony medical journals all touting the healing properties of this wonder drug.
Even when the girls started to get sick, teeth falling from their heads, leg bones so weakened by radiation that would snap or simply start to disappear in the leg itself, the push for profits continued. Even when witnesses could see the bones of the girls glowing in a darkened room, even when they died from radiation poisoning, the denials of harm persisted. In fact, US Radium would pay off coroners to skip autopsies and declare the cause of death as syphilis, or some other equally socially repugnant disease.
It was only when Dr. Lehman, a young man, died that medical officials demanded an autopsy which proved the devastating effects of radium. This autopsy and the lawsuit of the radium girls led to not only an overhaul of the radium industry, but a fundamental change in worker safety laws.
Though none of these radium girls lived past their thirty’s they still shine bright in our history …. literally. Unlike the 11-day half-life of the radium used in modern chemotherapy treatments, the radium used by the Radium Girls has a half-life of 1600 years causing their remains to remain radioactive for centuries to come. When exhumed, reports state that the caskets themselves would glow, illuminating the night before being removed from the ground. Though now buried in led lined caskets, some visitors report being able to detect radiation at their gravesites.
Through this play we seek to honor the bravery and sacrifice of these girls whose heroism still impacts our lives today. Author: Stephen Renard
