The book tries to portray a picture of the girls as they lived their lives. However, much of it is supposition. It is hard to piece together the lives of lower-class women from a century ago. It ends up focussing a lot on the quest for recompense from the companies via the legal system.
Is the legal system the solution or the problem? If there were not such potential for significant damage would companies be more willing to admit the problems and dangers and move on for the betterment of all. Instead a lot of work is spent trying to avoid guilt by various technicalities or outright subterfuge.
At the time, Radium was seen as a miracle substance. It was supposed to cure many maladies. However, the literature was mostly self-serving, with research by those that expected to benefit. Are there more substances like that today? How much harm will occur due to unknown dangers? How can we better handle harms that occur in the future? The current legal framework only works if there is still a deep pocket available. This does not necessarily relate to real damage that occurs.
Tony Hsieh attempted to deliver "happiness" at Zappos. He even tried to extend this to the city itself with the "Las Vegas Project" to revitalize downtown Vegas. Alas, his "happiness" was just as superficial as Vegas itself. The culture encouraged partying and superficial signs of happiness. He attempted to have a "self-organizing" culture rather than bureaucracy. Alas, it often ended up enabling cronyism. The Las Vegas Project attempted to setup a startup community in Vegas with many "cultural" institutions. Many startups came, but the community never really got off the ground and many of the lofty goals fell away.