Wednesday, December 28, 2016

The Radium Girls - Kate Moore

This was one of the stories I knew a little about.  How in the early 20th century, young women working at watch factories were trained to lick the end of their brushes leading to many of them getting Radium poisoning.

I was unaware of how many of this young female workforce died, how quickly it happened and how horribly these poor girls suffered.  The doctors at the time I guess knew  no better, but the women had a tough time getting appropriate medical help or any support from the management or owners of the company's they worked for.

It would be unbelievable if it was a fictional plot, yet it still felt in parts like I was reading a horror novel.  I was dumbfounded at the end to discover that the sites where the factories were are still toxic, but the public still seems vulnerable.  5/5

1 comment:

John Bellen said...

I never would have thought of such a thing, either. It seems as though there are many things that we use every day that later are proved to be poisonous. Sometimes I think our methods of testing haven't advanced much.