A quiz question · easy
What workplace technique poisoned the Radium Girls who painted luminous watch dials?
Lip-pointing delivered a trace of radium — which the body deposits in bone like calcium — with every dial. The company chemists used lead screens and forceps.
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The Radium Girls, the Dial Painters Poisoned by Their Own Employers in the 1920s From 1917, young women painting luminous watch dials were taught to point their brushes with their lips, swallowing radium with every stroke. As their jaws crumbled and their bones fractured, the companies denied everything. Grace Fryer's 1927-28 lawsuit against US Radium became a landmark of workers' rights.
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