The Radium Girls’ Dark Story Still Glows With Death and Deceit

The first illnesses appeared around 1920, and initially, doctors were baffled. Otherwise healthy young women were suddenly sick with a number of ailments, including anemia and cancer. But the most concerning symptom these working-class women had was necrosis of the jaw: Their faces were literally rotting away. So what did these young women have in common other than their symptoms? They were all factory workers. Every one of them worked in radium dial factories in New Jersey, Illinois and Connecticut. […]

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