Futility Closet - 358-The Radium Girls

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 12,000 quirky curiosities from old spam to English baseball. This is episode 358. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1917, a New Jersey company began hiring young women to paint luminous marks on the faces of watches and clocks. As time went on, they began to exhibit alarming symptoms, and a struggle ensued to establish the cause. In today's show, we'll tell the story of the Radium Girls, a landmark case

Starting point is 00:00:46 in labor safety. We'll also consider some resurrected yeast and puzzle over a posthumous journey. And just a quick programming note, we'll be off for the next couple of weeks, and we'll be back with a new episode on October 4th. In 1917, 15-year-old Catherine Schaub took a job with a new employer in Orange, New Jersey. The United States had just entered World War I, and there was a great demand for luminous dials that fighting men could read in the trenches, on aircraft, and on convoy ships. Catherine would be painting luminous numbers on watch and clock dials in a dial painting studio for the Radium Luminous Materials Corporation. The company had been launched by an Austrian immigrant, Sabine von Saschocki, who had worked out a formula for a self-luminous paint. The

Starting point is 00:01:42 paint contained a tiny amount of radium, which released alpha particles and stimulated zinc sulfide to luminesce. It was cheap to produce, and luminous watch dials were quickly becoming a fad. The dial painters were young women, ranging in age from their mid-teens to their early twenties. They sat at long tables in a sunny room on the second floor of the new company building. One of them said, We were a fine, upstanding bunch of girls, even though not many of us had been to high school. We were always neatly dressed, in our shirtwaists and skirts, and we worked hard in the studio.

Starting point is 00:02:22 The work paid comparatively well, so the women recommended it to their friends and relatives. Catherine encouraged her cousin Irene Rudolph to join her there. Catherine said, I was pleased with the idea of a job which would engage me in war work. Some of the young women would scratch their names and addresses into these watches, and sometimes a lonely soldier would respond with a letter. Each woman worked at her own pace, mixing the paint herself and then carefully filling in the marks on the faces of watches that were arranged in trays before her. Because the marks were fine, each worker was taught to bring her paintbrush to a point by pressing it between her lips. When they weren't painting dials, the women amused themselves by applying the radium paint to their buttons, fingernails, and eyelids. At least one coated her teeth with it before a date to create a smile that glowed in the dark. After a day's work, they would be covered with luminous powder. At night,

Starting point is 00:03:11 they noticed that their clothing and fingers glowed and their hair shone in the dark. They had no concerns about this. The Radium Luminous Materials Corporation was selling radium for medicinal use and had declared it healthful. At one point, a concerned doctor asked Catherine Chaub whether the luminous paint she worked with contained phosphorus, which was known to be poisonous. Catherine shared her concern with her co-workers, but both Von Sashoky and a medical colleague convinced them that their work wasn't hazardous. They provided small bowls of water in which the women could rinse their brushes, but these were soon discontinued because the rinsing was wasting too much paint. Catherine and Irene worked as dial painters for about three years each and left for other work

Starting point is 00:03:54 in 1920 and 1921. In the spring of 1922, Irene's cheek swelled and she had a tooth extracted. The socket became inflamed and sore, and by July, her jaw was swollen. More teeth were removed, and her gum was opened to permit the removal of pus and rotting bone. By December, she'd been admitted to a hospital. Other painters suffered similar illnesses. The State Department of Labor inspected the factory and analyzed the paint, but found nothing that conflicted with state factory laws. A consulting chemist found no phosphorus in the paint, but suggested that radium might be behind the dial painter's illness. He suggested that the workers be warned of the dangers of

Starting point is 00:04:35 getting radium on their skin or in their mouths, but the Labor Department took no action. Irene Rudolph died in July 1923, after what Catherine Schaub described as a most terrible and mysterious illness of a year and a half. Her death certificate blamed phosphorus poisoning. Catherine filed complaints with the State Departments of Health and Labor, saying that she knew of similar cases among other former employees, one of whom had also died, but apart from confirming the facts, they took no action. As the 1920s advanced, more women began to appear in the offices of doctors and dentists, complaining of aching bones, ulcers of the gum, tooth loss, anemia, pneumonia, and angina.

Starting point is 00:05:21 The most common condition was a painful decay of bone and tissue in the mouth, which became known as jaw rot. Dentists who tried to extract bad teeth discovered that the women's jaw bones were diseased so badly that chunks of bone came out as well. By 1923, five of the New Jersey workers had died of a condition that came to be called radium jaw. By 1924, 50 women who'd worked at the plant were ill, and 12 had died. The same thing had begun happening to dial painters working in Connecticut and Illinois. Some women developed bone cancers as their bodies had assimilated the radium, like calcium. Catherine Schaub's teeth began to trouble her

Starting point is 00:05:56 in November 1923. She wrote, I kept thinking about Irene and about the trouble she had with her jaw. I felt that there was some relationship between Irene's case and mine. I cannot explain just why, but I did. A local dentist and oral surgeon began to warn patients away from the dial painting studio, but they still confusedly suspected phosphorus poisoning. They recommended that the company stop its dial painting procedures, but the company rejected the idea that it was harmful, and the health and labor departments, though sympathetic, had failed in three attempts to show that the painters' deaths

Starting point is 00:06:29 and illnesses were related to their work. To some extent, the confusion was understandable. Less than 10 years earlier, radium had been considered therapeutic. It was thought to play a role in the healthfulness of certain spring waters. The Standard Chemical Company of Pittsburgh had investigated the use of radon and radium in treating arthritis, gout, neuritis, diabetes, neurasthenia, pyuria, high blood pressure, pernicious anemia, and leukemia. The company published a journal and in 1916 formed the American Radium Society to promote the scientific study of radium therapeutics. Some physicians based entire practices on radium treatments. By 1914, the use of radium in internal medicine had a nod from the American Medical Association. It was studied at leading research institutions, was

Starting point is 00:07:17 well regarded in the medical literature, and had been promoted by both New York State and the U.S. government. Only during the war did skepticism arise as the dangers of radiation exposure came to light. But the New Jersey Company, which became U.S. Radium in 1921, continued to promote its product as an internal medicine, even as concerns continued to mount. By 1923, the dial painters knew that they were facing an industrial disease, and by 1925, many scientists and most government officials had conceded that the illnesses were caused by radium. But the industry resisted, enlisting consultants, concealing data, and promoting opinions that placed the blame

Starting point is 00:07:56 elsewhere. In 1925, the president of U.S. Radium told the New Jersey Consumers League, if a common cause exists, we are convinced that it lies outside of our plant and that this is not an occupational disease. But a Harvard study identified radium as the likely cause of the dial painter's illness, pointing out that after exposure to radioactive dust in the building, quote, the hair, faces, hands, arms, necks, the dresses, the underclothes, even the corsets of the dial painters were luminous. After Katz inhaled powdered luminous paint, radium was found fixed in their bones.

Starting point is 00:08:32 The company's president, Arthur Roeder, objected to the conclusions and insisted that, quote, there is nothing harmful anywhere in the works. But after a confrontation with the New Jersey Commissioner of Labor, U.S. radium left New Jersey and reopened in New York City. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics turned its attention to cases outside New Jersey. At the Radium Dial Company of Ottawa, Illinois, which in 1925 was the largest dial painting firm in the country, workers decorated their buttons and belts and painted rings on their fingers with radium paint, as the workers in New Jersey had. They too had been trained to lip-point their brushes and had been assured that the luminous material was safe. The BLS found that one of these workers had enough radium in her system to test

Starting point is 00:09:15 radioactive. But still, radium hadn't been definitely established as the cause of the dial painter's illnesses. No one had shown how radium might act in the body to create the symptoms they were seeing. In New Jersey, Catherine Shaw was gloomy and morbid, in her own words. She'd been ill over the winter, and a friend from the studio had died in December. She wrote, the massive cold white drifts against the windows made me think of nature in all her cruelty and destruction. I was only 22 years old, with youth on my side, and yet no one was able to help me. Bad news continued to roll in. The new Essex County medical examiner, Harrison Martland, found that inhaled radium may have caused the death of U.S.

Starting point is 00:09:56 radium's own chemist, Edwin Lehman. When dial painter Sarah Carlo Mifare died in June 1925, Martland found radioactive substances stored in her spleen, liver, and bones. Tests found that her sister Marguerite was radioactive. So was Catherine Schaub. Martland's paper appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association in December. He singled out injected or ingested radium as dangerous. His work helped stamp out the practice of lip-pointing, but it still hadn't been completely established that the dial painters suffered from an industrial disease. That conclusion came, ironically, when an industry cover-up backfired. A man named

Starting point is 00:10:36 Frederick Flynn approached Catherine Schaub, representing himself as an expert on radium poisoning and offering what he called an unbiased opinion. In fact, he'd been hired to refute the mounting evidence of radium's harmful effects. He assured Catherine that none of her illnesses were attributable to radium and concluded that, quote, an industrial hazard does not exist in the painting of luminous dials. But under mounting criticism, he was forced to acknowledge that he knew of similar cases in Waterbury, Connecticut. This was the first word of corroborating cases at other dial painting plants. Combined with Martland's findings, it was enough to convince most medical experts that industrial radium poisoning was a real threat. By 1926, six New Jersey dial painters and two

Starting point is 00:11:19 New Jersey chemists were known to have died of radium poisoning. Attention now turned to winning compensation. Harrison Martland became a star witness at these proceedings. He displayed images he'd made of radium in the bones of living dial painters. He'd wrapped x-ray film around their legs, and radiation from their bones had marked the film. And he declared that his tests on the five plaintiffs in court demonstrated beyond doubt that the women suffered from radium poisoning. In 1929, a report on the work of the Bureau of Labor Statistics appeared in the Monthly Labor Review. The radium industry was condemned for its appalling disease rate and for its continued disregard of workers' health. In studying 31 establishments that employed 2,000 workers handling radioactive substances,

Starting point is 00:12:05 the Bureau had found 23 radium-related fatalities, 19 living cases, and 9 possible cases. Of these 51 employees, 33 were dial painters. In scathing language, the report criticized industry officials who'd heard of the New Jersey cases, realized that their own workers were radioactive, and then concealed their discoveries because they'd feared disruption of their business if the facts became known. Even the victims themselves hadn't been informed of their condition. The exact numbers aren't known, but it's estimated that 10 or 11 women in New Jersey ultimately received compensation for their illnesses, 16 in Connecticut and 13 in Illinois. The largest awards went to those who had been affected worst and earliest,

Starting point is 00:12:49 but even most of these received only a few thousand dollars. The consequences of the company's carelessness were still being felt decades later, when dirt waste was taken from the old New Jersey factory site and used as fill. It was later found that radon gas had seeped from this into at least 200 homes in Montclair, Glen Ridge, and West Orange, New Jersey, causing radon levels 100 times the safe level. As recently as 2001, at an apartment complex on the site of the old Waterbury Clock Company in Connecticut, investigators found a radiation exposure level of 30 millirems of

Starting point is 00:13:25 radiation per year, when the average chest x-ray delivered 10 millirems, and the EPA's exposure standard was 15 millirems. The dial painters were among the first historic victims of radioactivity. Their illnesses would inform health standards for workers, doctors, patients, and scientists, and today their story is used as a case study in health physics, epidemiology, and occupational health. It's regarded as a classic case in which a puzzling pattern of symptoms yielded to careful study. Catherine Schaub used her 1928 settlement money to pay down her parents' mortgage and tax bill. Expecting to live only another year, she went shopping, determined, as she said,

Starting point is 00:14:10 to live like Cinderella as the princess at the ball. Through ill health and depression, she pursued her education and worked on an autobiography, but at age 26, she wrote, While other girls are going to dances and the theater and courting and marrying for love, I have to remain here and watch painful death approach. She outlived her prognosis, but died in 1933 at age 31. One of the longest-lived of the radium girls was May Keene, who had worked for just a few months at the Waterbury Clock Company in the summer of 1924 at age 18. She hadn't ingested much paint because she had disliked its grittiness. did much paint because she had disliked its grittiness. Still, within two decades, she had lost all her teeth. She died in 2014 at age 107. A year before her death, journalist Inisa Ramirez asked why she had not shared her story more widely. She said she feared that her long life

Starting point is 00:14:57 would give the wrong message about the danger of radium. In episode 351, we talked about how two scientists have been searching for forgotten strains of brewing yeast in old beer cellars in Germany. Richard Taylor let us know about an article in The Atlantic from July that explains that while researchers have been studying fats and proteins from ancient pots and other relics for decades, just within the last few years, scientists have begun also searching for microbes, such as yeast, that would have created fermented foods like cheese, wine, and beer. So a team of scientists asked the Israel Antiquities Authority for pieces of pottery that might have been used in brewing, and they were given items dating back from 500 to 3100 BC, from which the team was able to isolate

Starting point is 00:15:57 and grow six strains of yeast, which they then used to make beer. Aaron Meyer, an archaeologist with the group, said, it was good. I told everybody either it's going to be good or we'll all be dead in half a minute. We survived to tell the story. One big question is whether these recovered yeast were from the alcohol that had been in the pots or from the environment the pots had been in. The teams collected yeast from other vessels that were from the same sites, but that hadn't contained alcohol, and found that the brewing yeast only showed up in the pots that had been used to make alcoholic beverages. So that's helpful, but it doesn't absolutely prove that the yeast they recovered did date all the way back to the time of the

Starting point is 00:16:40 pot's origins. Because some yeast could have found its way into the pots at a later date. Yeah, I mean, there's a certain amount of yeast always in the environment, so the pots could have just picked it up just from what they happened to be lying in or what was nearby. Ken Ward wrote, Hi, Greg and Sharon. You will no doubt get a ton of messages about this, but Play-Doh shrimp, it just so happens that I saw an article just yesterday that the BBC did, published 22nd June 2021, on bio-prospecting for yeast in a ship sunk over 100 years ago. Greg wondered out loud,

Starting point is 00:17:12 is there any project to capture and store strains of yeast from modern breweries? Turns out there is. Though it is housed in England and called the National Collection of Yeast Cultures, it has recent and ancient yeast cultures for brewing, baking, etc. from all over the world. And Ken, you were the only one who sent us this, so thanks! The BBC article from June was about searching for long-forgotten beer-brewing yeast strains, particularly from shipwrecks. Unlike the Israeli research, where they are having to assume that the yeast they're finding are the same ones that were originally used, here yeasts are being cultured directly from old bottles of beer that went down on a ship,

Starting point is 00:18:00 such as the Wallachia, a cargo ship that sank off the Scottish coast in 1895, preserving bottles of beer on the cold seabed. Scientists were able to extract live yeast from some of the bottles and use that yeast to try to recreate the original beer. The article reports that the beer they got had the character of farmyard or wet horse. While that doesn't sound too appealing to me, the article suggests that in moderation, such earthy flavors could potentially give beer a unique rich quality. And Ken sent links to

Starting point is 00:18:31 several stories that showed that this was not nearly the first time that beer has been recreated from old shipwrecked versions. In 2018, a similar project in Tasmania used the yeast from beer bottles found on a sunken merchant ship from 1796. The Queen Victoria Museum partnered with the Australian brewing company James Squire to try to recreate the old beer with the goal of offering it for sale. According to Hayden Morgan, the head brewer of James Squire, who was tasked with trying to brew beer from the more than 200 year old yeast, the yeast showed rather different properties than modern commercial ones, for example, rapidly consuming all the available sugars during

Starting point is 00:19:09 fermentation. Morgan also noted that modern commercial yeasts would be dead within weeks, whereas the centuries-old yeast was able to be quickly revived. They named the new beer the Wreck Preservation Ale, and while a museum conservator involved in the project described it as quite nice, Morgan, with perhaps a bit more marketing savvy, says that the beer features spicy clove aromas and a touch of chocolate. Similarly, Jamie Adams, a New York brewery owner and scuba diver, in 2017 managed to retrieve some intact bottles of beer from the SS Oregon, a luxury liner that was sailing from Liverpool to New York when it sank off of Fire Island in 1886. He was able to extract yeast and culture it with

Starting point is 00:19:51 some help from a microbiologist friend, and he then spent the next two years experimenting with brewing test batches. The beer that he created, named Deep Ascent Ale, is described by an article in AP News as having a slightly fruity taste and a hoppy finish. Adams says that the beer is a replication of what would have been served on that ship in 1886. We want people to have a small taste of what life was like as a passenger on this ship. The article also notes that back in 1991, a British brewer was able to use yeast salvaged from a barge that sank in the English Channel in 1825 to create what was named Original Flag Porter.

Starting point is 00:20:30 So this kind of thing has apparently been going on for some time now. I've never heard of this before. No, I hadn't either. I had no idea. I mean, it's kind of a cool concept. It makes sense what you hear about, but I wonder who came up with that in the first place. Yeast causes fermentation by converting sugars in malted grains into alcohols and various byproducts. As some of these byproducts produce distinct flavors,

Starting point is 00:20:51 this means that different yeast strains metabolizing sugar in their unique ways will produce different flavor profiles. Most modern brewers don't tend to vary the yeast they use, instead altering other ingredients such as the grain or hops to produce new flavors. But some beer makers and scientists have started focusing on trying to use rather different strains of yeast, such as some of these old forgotten ones, to produce new flavors or better beers. Ken had mentioned the National Collection of Yeast Cultures, or NCYC, in England, which was established in 1951. They conducted an experiment there where they brewed 33 beers that were the same except for the yeast used, and the flavor profiles of the resulting beers varied greatly. The NCYC has around 600 strains of brewing yeast, some of which were

Starting point is 00:21:37 added by UK breweries that were facing closure during economic downturns in the 1950s and 60s, and some of these strains have been mostly forgotten about since, so bringing back the use of some of them would be another way for brewers to diversify their products, and probably more easily than getting them off of sunken ships. So there's a kind of library or bank of beer flavors. A whole bunch of them, yep. And it does seem that some breweries are interested in reviving old yeast strains. Jay Spectle wrote,

Starting point is 00:22:06 On today's podcast, you mentioned looking for heritage brewing yeasts. Cincinnati has a long tradition of brewing and lots of German heritage. A few years ago, they found a viable strain of 100-plus-year-old brewer's yeast from the Link Brewery on a brewing vessel down in one of the old lagering cellars that are prevalent in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Urban Artifact Brewery had an earlier first release using the heritage yeast, and the beer was, pun intended, no pun intended, pretty yeasty in flavor. I haven't tried any from the 2021 versions, though. And Jace sent some helpful links about a festival celebrating beers made from these old yeasts called the Missing Link Festival, about a festival celebrating beers made from these old yeasts called the Missing Link Festival,

Starting point is 00:22:50 and that's L-I-N-C-K after the Link Brothers, German immigrants who opened a brewery in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1855. That brewery closed in 1860, but the cellars were rented by a number of the city's prominent brewers before eventually being sealed off and forgotten about until they were rediscovered in 2016, containing an old wooden fermenting tank. Swabs were collected from the tank's vat and spigots and sealed in jars of unfermented grain. Many didn't ferment. Some fermented but produced a terrible flavor, and some produced a vile black goo. But one of the jars proved to contain a promising brewing yeast. It isn't known what the origins of this yeast are, but the best guess is that it's probably from illegal prohibition error brewing.

Starting point is 00:23:30 That yeast was used to create a batch of Missing Link beer in 2019, and the Cincinnati City Council declared June 1, 2019 to be Missing Link Day. Apparently, Cincinnati is pretty serious about their beer. The yeast was then shared with several other city brewers so they could create their own versions, and a big Missing Link Festival was planned for 2020 to celebrate these different creations, but COVID caused the event to be canceled. So a scaled-down, socially distanced celebration was instead planned for this year's debut festival, with several breweries around the city offering their versions of the Missing Link beer for several days. And that does sound like it would be pretty cool if you were a real beer aficionado. Missing Link is a good name for it. There's a story there

Starting point is 00:24:15 that's been completely forgotten except for that one little trace. That's true. That's a good point. And of course, yeasts are also used to produce other foods, such as bread, and there have been some similar efforts to find and use old baking yeast to recreate old breads, but that's a whole other story. Thanks as always to everyone who writes to us. We really appreciate all the follow-ups and feedback. So if you have any to send to us, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange sounding situation,

Starting point is 00:25:01 and I have to work out what's going on by asking yes or no questions. This is from listener Tim Ellis. A doctor recommended that a man go to Europe for treatment. Though the man had died before the trip could be made, his government issued a passport anyway, and he was still flown to France for the treatment. Why? Oh, interesting.

Starting point is 00:25:20 This was going to be a medical treatment? Huh. I'm not sure whether I would say that or not. would you say that it was more of an aesthetic treatment like to change his looks in some way no i won't i'll say no to that oh okay did they still perform the treatment on him even after he Yes. So a man is dead. Yes. And flies to another country. Yes. And a treatment is performed on him. Yes. On his dead body.

Starting point is 00:25:53 Yes. On his body. Yes. Just checking. He was like exercised of demons or something. I don't know. Maybe that would be why you can't answer the questions. So, okay. Would

Starting point is 00:26:06 you say a doctor performed this treatment? Or a team of doctors, doctor or doctors plural? I'm sorry. I was supposed to be giving you a nice, clear answer. I'm trying to understand what kind of treatment. I guess I'll have to say yes. Okay, let's back up. Did a person or group of people perform this treatment on him? Yes. Okay. But you can't say whether that was a doctor, like a medical doctor?

Starting point is 00:26:37 No, I think I can. Let's say yes. Let's say yes. I'm trying to be- Was it a vet, a veterinarian? No. Good guess. This is a human, not like a werewolf or...

Starting point is 00:26:48 No, that's right. Full human. Yes. Okay. All right. Human man dies and a treatment is still performed on him. Oh, does he have like a Siamese twin? Wow.

Starting point is 00:27:00 And they had to extricate the twin. No. No. Good guess. Darn. Because you'd need to do that, especially if the other guy died. Right. You definitely need to do that.

Starting point is 00:27:09 Full credit. Okay. So that's not it. Oh, did they need to, were they performing this treatment maybe for the benefit of somebody else, like harvesting his organs or something? Yeah. Or bone marrow or something for some other person. No.

Starting point is 00:27:26 Oh, shoot. Okay, so he's dead. Would this treatment have involved cutting him in any way? No. Adding something to him? No. I'll tell you it's a radiation treatment. For cancer?

Starting point is 00:27:43 No. They're trying to kill something in him or on him yes a parasite uh i guess you could call it that a fungus so there's a person who has a fungus growing on him or in him yes and he's going to another country yes to get a treatment to kill the fungus. Yes. And even though he's dead, they still need to kill it because it could be dangerous to other people? No. Okay. Is it a specific fungus?

Starting point is 00:28:16 Like, do I need to guess what kind of fungus it is? Do I need to figure out where he picked the fungus up from? No. Do I need to understand what country he's going to? No, it's France. I'll just tell you. Do I need to understand what country he came from? That would help. And... You want me to start guessing countries? No, because that'll take forever. He started somewhere other than France. Yeah. Is it nearish to France? He started somewhere other than France.

Starting point is 00:28:43 Yeah. Is it nearish to France? It's in Africa. I'll just tell you. Okay. It's Egypt. Oh, oh, he died a long time ago. This is like a mummy.

Starting point is 00:28:58 Yes, that's exactly it. The man was Ramesses II, the third pharaoh of the 19th dynasty of Egypt. In 1975, it was discovered that his mummy was threatened by fungus and needed to be transported to France for treatment. French law required that he have a valid passport to enter and travel through the country, so the Egyptian government issued one. Thanks, Tim. Excellent. We are always on the lookout for more lateral thinking puzzles, so if you have one you'd like to send for us to try, please send that to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Just a reminder that we'll be off for two weeks. In the meantime, if you'd like to become one of the awesome supporters of our show and check out some bonus content like outtakes, extra lateral thinking puzzles,

Starting point is 00:29:42 more discussions on some of the stories and peeks behind the scenes of the show, please see our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com. While you're at the site, you can also graze through Greg's galamafree of over 12,000 singular snatics. Browse the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, learn about the Futility Closet books,

Starting point is 00:30:05 and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any comments or feedback for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed by Greg's undemised brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll be back on October 4th.

Futility Closet - 358-The Radium Girls

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