The Women Who Glowed — The Radium Girls
In the 1910s–20s, young American women painted watch dials with radium paint — and were taught to shape their brushes with their lips. They swallowed radioactive paint every single day. When they began to die, the company called it harmless. History remembers them as the Radium Girls. Their courtroom fight — proven by an exhumed body that still tested radioactive — rewrote worker-safety law forever. A Relics Exposed short narrated by the Relic Hunter.
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In the 1910s–20s, young American women painted watch dials with radium paint — and were taught to shape their brushes with their lips. They swallowed radioactive paint every single day. When they began to die, the company called it harmless. History remembers them as the Radium Girls. Their courtroom fight — proven by an exhumed body that still tested radioactive — rewrote worker-safety law forever. A Relics Exposed short narrated by the Relic Hunter.
Full transcript of The Women Who Glowed — The Radium Girls
These watches glowed in the dark. So, eventually, did the women who painted them. The paint was radium. Factories taught the women to sharpen their brushes — with their lips. They swallowed radioactive paint every single day. When they began to die, the company said the paint was harmless. History remembers them as the Radium Girls. Five years after one was buried, her body was exhumed — still radioactive. It proved the company had lied. Their fight rewrote worker-safety law. More buried stories like this one — follow Relics Exposed, and we'll unearth them together.