urges that much more should be done to remove the sources of radiation because is starting to appear in furnaces, soil, and plants. The cleanup, however, has cost them about $10 million and has been in progress for over a decade (Patel 76). The young women of 1917 (ranging from mid-teens to early twenties) usually descendants of immigrants, worked particularly in dial painting factories. A new wrist - watch invention came into play which provided luminosity to allow soldiers to see their watches in the dark. However, around the 1920s-1930s, present and past dial painters began to suffer from various illnesses. Many scientists believe today it was due to an extensive amount of radium in the dye that painters worked with. Many of the women ingested the paint by licking the tip of the paint brushes to make the numbers and symbols on the wristwatches finer in detail. In addition, the dust from the air is constantly being inhaled in the factories (Clark 1-2). Each day dial painters dosed themselves with bone- and tissue-damaging sub- stances. Some of these included bone marrow and bone tissue (especially in the jaw) which lead to infection and diseases in the gums and other dental regions. Studies suggest that 18% of women who worked before 1950 accumulated a significant dose of radium and almost 700 women who worked before 1930 had an estimated rate of 42% of initial body burdens of 5 microcuries (radioactive material) and 16% having 50 microcuries or more (Clark 8-9). Many of these dial painters were left handicapped and their attitudes and efforts have been extensively studied, but interviews with survivors tended to be unsuccessful due to concerns about interference with long- term studies. These studies have shown that in the early twentieth century, women were more susceptible to toxic chemicals than men. Some theories suggest that women at this time were younger than men and were employed more in industries containing substances that could lead to chronic poisoning (Clark 23). The first illness linked to industrial radium poisoning came to light in Orange, New Jersey, in 1922 (Moore 385). These reports were from women who were instructed to apply luminous numbers on dials. Katherine Schaub, a dial painter, was one of the first to make the connection towards the dial painting illnesses. She participated in several suits against her employers which even led to the covers of newspapers and magazines. Furthermore, she wrote letters expressing her fears about her illnesses to a pathologist named Harrison Martland who further identified radium as the cause of cancer and death in the women. However, Martland was a medical examiner, who declined to testify in his early testimonies due to citing publicity and “misstatements”. Moreover, he only discussed other physicians in his consultations and conclusions, but not even those were direct. This left Dial painters and their lawyers in an unten - able position because there was little to no equipment allowed to diagnose radium poisoning.
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