The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate MooreMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Picked up this book (gifted by the lovely Judie!) after a leisurely New Year's day breakfast and BAM! Got sucked in and had to finish it in one sitting. It's nonfiction handled very well, it reads like the best of thrillers!
Based on Melanie Marnich's play "These Shining Lives," the book focuses on the sad lives of the Radium Girls who were allowed to lick paintbrushes with radioactive paint on them, as they painted watch dials with Undark during and after World War I. The poisoned paint made them glow and affected their bodies most horribly, the details of which are too terrible to share here! But a quick Google search will reveal all (including pictures!!).
It's a sad tale of corporate greed taking precedence over humanity, and the most horrifying thing of all is... the drama basically played out again as late as 1978, with dial workers in Luminous Processes, Ottawa, Illinois. It is a town where people with visible birth defects are seen by passersby, where every household has a cancer patient. And why not? When you consider the fact that radium has a half life of 1,600 years!
It horrified me to discover that in the 1920's, radium was considered a good thing... so good that there was radioactive water (Radithor) drunk by the wealthy, and there was radium butter, radium milk, radium pads, radium lipstick, radium chocolates!
It makes one think... what products are we consuming today that we don't as of yet know are lethal in large doses? *gazes thoughtfully at coffee cup*
And now I can't wait to read the play the book was based on!
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