CASE RECORD · REAL HISTORY · ALL RECORDS
The Radium Girls: The Watch Painters Poisoned by Their Work
How factory workers who painted glowing watch dials exposed a deadly hazard and changed workplace safety law.
Quick answer
Who were the Radium Girls?
The Radium Girls were young women who painted watch and instrument dials with glowing radium paint in US factories in the 1910s and 1920s. They were taught to shape their brushes with their lips, swallowed radium, and many developed severe bone damage, anemia and cancer. Their lawsuits in the late 1920s and 1930s helped establish workers' rights to sue employers for occupational disease.
Timeline
- 1917The US Radium Corporation begins hiring young women in Orange, New Jersey, to paint dials with radium-based paint.
- Early 1920sDial painters begin falling ill with jaw necrosis, anemia and bone fractures, later called radium poisoning.
- 1927Grace Fryer and four co-workers sue US Radium. The press calls them the Radium Girls.
- 1928The case settles out of court, with lump sums, annual payments and medical costs for the women.
- 1938Catherine Donohue wins her case against the Radium Dial Company of Ottawa, Illinois.
What is documented, and what is not
On the record
- Workers were instructed to point their brushes with their lips, a practice known as "lip, dip, paint."
- Radium deposited in their bones, causing necrosis, cancers and early deaths.
- Their cases contributed to occupational disease law and later radiation safety standards.
Disputed or unproven
- The exact number of dial painters who died from radium exposure is not known.
- How much the companies knew, and when, was contested in court at the time.
Common questions
Why did the Radium Girls put brushes in their mouths?
They were told to point their brushes with their lips to make fine lines. Each time, they swallowed a small amount of radium paint.
Are the Radium Girls' graves still radioactive?
Radium has a half-life of about 1,600 years, so radium deposited in the bones of the dial painters is still radioactive today.
What changed because of the Radium Girls?
Their lawsuits helped establish that employers could be held responsible for occupational diseases, and the study of their health later informed radiation safety limits.
Read the record yourself
- The Radium Girls at the National Archives ↗US National Archives blog
- New Jersey's Radium Girls and the scientist who came to their aid ↗National Institute of Standards and Technology
- Newspaper coverage, 1927 to 1938 ↗Library of Congress search
Links go to official archives, museums, agencies and published research. Search links open the archive's own search for this topic.
THE FICTION BUILT ON THIS RECORD · FILE 048 · VOLUME VIIIThey Told the Girls Radium Was Safe. Their Graves Still Glow.Every miracle product is safe until the people who handle it start to die.Read the first pages free →Last reviewed 2026-10-13. This page covers the public record only. Archive files are dramatized and always marked as files.
Signal
Get the next file before everyone else.
New files drop without warning. Leave an address and we'll tell you first. We email rarely. Suspiciously rarely.