Women swallowed radium using the lip, dip, paint routine. They’re descendants of two of the original radium girls, Peg Looney and Catherine Donohue, who are buried here in lead-lined coffins. To calm spreading fears about radium poisoning, Radium Dial officials placed a full-page paid proclamation denying any connection between radium and the growing number of ill radium workers./ June 7, 1928/The Daily Times. I’m standing in Ottawa’s Oakwood Memorial Park with Darlene Halm and Kathleen Cofoid. ![]() The Fox River, which flows through communities like Elgin and Aurora, empties into the Illinois in downtown Ottawa. Ottawa is known as the scenic gateway to Starved Rock State Park, the most popular state park in Illinois, with some 2 million visitors per year. Brazil nuts and some granite counter tops contain radium. Both girls are best friends and work together at Radium Dial Company. Radium is still in household products today, but not deliberately and not in amounts considered harmful by the government. The play, spanning from 1923 to 1938, highlights several women working at the company but primarily focuses on two women: Peg Looney and Catherine Donohue. Company doctors claimed the cause of death was diphtheria. But many of the so-called radium watches are still around today, considered antiques and even prized as collectibles. Peg Looney, who had loved to be surrounded by family and friends, died alone on August 14. Radium was eventually banned after scores of dial painters died from cancer and various ghastly ailments. Their fight for justice is described vividly in The Radium Girls by Kate Moore.Related: What Is Ottawa-Carleton Pay? Are there any radium watches left? Title: The Radium Girls Author: Kate Moore Publisher: Sourcebooks Release Date: May, 2017 Lip, dip, paint, lip, dip, paint, lip, dip, paint, lip, dip, paint, lip, dip. ![]() Any that survived this stage later succumbed to bone sarcomas.Īs more and more girls fell ill and died it became apparent that their condition must be connected to their work. Severe anaemia followed as the bone marrow was no longer able to function. For others the decay began in the legs or spine. ![]() Sunday, June 18, and Sunday, June 25, in the sixth lecture of the Ottawa History Lecture Series at the Ottawa History and. Darlene Halm, Peg Looney’s niece, will present the story The Radium Girls from a Personal Perspective at 2 p.m. Many of the girls first lost their teeth as necrosis of the jaw set in. Six years later, her family was mourning her tragic death at the age of 24 because of radium poisoning. The cumulative effect of the radiation destroys the bones from the inside out. ![]() Ingested radium localises in the bones, mimicking calcium and binding to hydroxyapatite. To paint with speed and precision they were instructed to smooth their brushes to a point between their lips. The work paid well but no-one warned them of the hazards associated with radium. They were employed at first to paint military dials with radium-based luminous paint for the First World War effort, and then as the radium craze swept the world, to paint watch and clock dials. The women would dip their brushes into radium, lick the tip of the brushes to give them a precise point, and paint the numbers onto the dial. Katherine Schaub, Amelia (Molly) Maggia, Quinta Maggia McDonald, Albina Maggia Larice, Helen Quinlan, Grace Fryer, Edna Bolz Hussman, Hazel Vincent Kuser, Marguerite Carlough, Catherine Wolfe Donohue, Inez Corcoran Vallat, Margaret (Peg) Looney… just a few of the young women, known as the radium girls, who lost their lives as a result of radium poisoning and industrial negligence. Why did they lick the radium brushes The factory manufactured glow-in-the-dark watch dials that used radium to make them luminous.
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