The Radium GirlsThe Radium Girls

In 1917, as a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks, and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium. It was a fun job, lucrative and glamorous. The girls themselves shone brightly in the dark, covered head to toe in the dust from the paint. As the years passed, the women began to suffer from mysterious and crippling illnesses. The very thing that had made them feel alive--their work--was in fact slowly killing them: they had been poisoned by the radium paint.