The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women

Why is the United States so obsessed with monetary justice through the legal system? This book details women that have had their health fall apart due to working with radium. They would put a brush in their mouth to point the bristles of the brush so that they could paint the small details on watches with a glowing radium paint. Unfortunately, this radium was found to be harmful and many had their bones crumple before they died an early death.

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.