The USRC never admitted any liability for the illnesses of the dial painters and settled the suits brought against it out of court, until the LaPorte case. Report, Decem(National Archives Identifier 75729459), page 3.
This meant claims for compensation fell under a two year statute of limitations and led to the discontinuance of several cases in progress against the company and brought a windfall to its shareholders. District Court for the District of New Jersey ruled against Vincent LaPorte, by that time widower of former dial painter Irene LaPorte, finding that the USRC had not fraudulently concealed the dangers of radium dial painting. The company would remain under litigation from former dial painters until 1936, when the U.S. Complaints and lawsuits by former employees against the USRC began to proliferate in 1923. Barker, Octo(National Archives Identifier 75725719).ĭuring the early 1920s, a growing number of scientists and physicians began to question the benefits of radium and, slowly, acknowledge its link with the debilitating illnesses afflicting dial painters. Instead, radium’s properties are similar enough to calcium that it can be incorporated into bones, gradually killing the tissues and affecting the blood. Dial painters were assured that the paint was safe and that the radium would simply pass through their digestive tract. Large amounts were recognized as dangerous, but minute quantities were said to invigorate the body and cure ailments. Anemia, fatigue, miscarriages, and fragile bones afflicted a number of the former dial painters, with many of the most severe documented cases found among those employed by the RLMC between 19.įor some time after its discovery radium was considered safe and was even advertised as a beneficial substance. The first signs typically appeared in the mouth, with dial painters seeking relief for rotting teeth and persistent pain, which proved the result of necrosis in their jawbones. Meanwhile, the consequences of this work began to emerge among some of those formerly employed in its studios. von Sochocky resigned from the RLMC and soon after the company reorganized as the USRC, which reduced, and eventually eliminated, its dial painting operations. Meanwhile, the powdered paint proved pervasive in RLMC plants in later years former dial painters would recall their hair and clothes glowing softly after the day’s work. To keep a fine point on the brush the painters used a technique known as lip pointing, placing the brush between their lips, and as a result ingested a minute quantity of radium with each dial. The process involved mixing the paint, provided to the workers as a powder, and using a fine brush to paint each number and arm in the dial. To apply its paints the RLMC, like other companies manufacturing radium dials, established several dial painting studios staffed primarily by young women. “Radium dial” watches were one of the company’s most successful products, valued in the trenches of World War I and considered fashionable in the United States. In 1917, his RLMC established a plant in Orange, New Jersey to manufacture and apply this luminous paint, sold under the name Undark, to watches and instrument dials. Sabin von Sochocky who found that by using a minute quantity of radium in combination with zinc sulfide he could produce a paint with a soft glow visible in the dark. These digitized records are now available in the National Archives Catalog as Records Related to Radium Dial Painters, 1917-1949 (National Archives Identifier 40978844).įollowing Marie Curie’s discovery of the element radium in 1898, scientists and entrepreneurs sought to understand and exploit the element’s properties. Donated by the Safety Light Corporation and scanned by the EPA, these electronic records document the perspective of the United States Radium Corporation (USRC) and its predecessor, the Radium Luminous Material Corporation (RLMC), on the story of the radium luminous paint dial painters, popularly known as the Radium Girls.
The original paper records, found to be radioactive, were discovered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) during cleanup operations at the Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania Safety Light Corporation Superfund site. Today’s post is written by Zachary Dabbs, Processing Archivist at the National Archives in College Park.ĭigitized Radioactive Documents Concerning Radium Dial Painters now in the National Archives CatalogĮarly in 2016, the Electronic Records Division of the National Archives and Records Administration received an unusual collection of donated electronic records.
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