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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls

Radium dial painters working in a factory

鐳姑娘是指在1917年左右美國鐳公司在奧蘭治 (新澤西州)工廠的一群女工，她們因替公司用夜光塗料去畫手錶錶盤而受到輻射中毒。

公司對她們說這些塗料無毒無害，教她們用舌頭舔尖筆頭以節省原料和精確填塗錶盤，結果攝入了數量足以致死的鐳；一些女工還用這種發光物質塗在指甲和牙齒上來互開玩笑。

其中的五個女工控告了她們的僱主，此案開先河後，患上職業病的勞工有權去起訴他們的僱主。

美國鐳公司

主條目：United States Radium Corporation

1917年到1926年間, 美國鐳公司, 原名鐳夜光材料有限公司, 從釩酸鉀鈾礦提取和純化鐳來生產發光塗料，然後以品牌「永亮」（「Undark」）進行銷售。 作為國防承包商, 美國鐳公司是夜光軍事手錶的主要供應商。

他們在伊利諾伊州僱傭了超過一百名塗畫工人，大多是婦女，誤導她們這很安全。

輻射暴露

美國鐳公司僱用了大約70名婦女來從事各種工作，包括處理鐳，

熟悉鐳的副作用的業主和科學家們都小心翼翼地避免暴露接觸鐳；在工廠的化學家則使用鉛屏，口罩和鉗子來防護。

美國鐳公司甚至還 distributed literature to the medical community 描述鐳的有害影響

估計有4000名工人被美國加拿大的公司僱傭來用鐳畫手錶錶盤。

他們把膠水、水和鐳粉混合，然後用駝絨刷子把這些閃閃發光的塗料刷到錶盤上。

The then-current rate of pay, for painting 250 dials a day, was about a penny and a half per dial ($0.36 per dial in today's terms).  

塗了寥寥幾筆後，刷子就會開叉變形，於是美國鐳公司的監事鼓勵工人們用嘴唇或舌頭弄尖刷頭。 鐳姑娘們還將這些致命的塗料畫在她們的指甲、牙齒和臉上來相互逗樂。

漸漸許多工人都生病了，因接觸輻射而死的人不計其數。

放射病

不久就有許多女工開始貧血、骨折和顎壞死，這種症狀現在稱為鐳顎。 It is thought that the X-ray machines used by the medical investigators may have contributed to some of the sickened workers' ill-health by subjecting them to additional radiation.

It turned out at least one of the examinations was a ruse, part of a campaign of disinformation started by the defense contractor.

U.S. Radium and other watch-dial companies rejected claims that the afflicted workers were suffering from exposure to radium.

For some time, doctors, dentists, and researchers complied with requests from the companies not to release their data.

At the urging of the companies, worker deaths were attributed by medical professionals to other causes; syphilis, a notorious sexually transmitted disease at the time, was often cited in attempts to smear the reputations of the women.

Significance

Litigation

The story of the abuse perpetrated against the workers is distinguished from most such cases by the fact that the ensuing litigation was covered widely by the media. Plant worker Grace Fryer decided to sue, but it took two years for her to find a lawyer willing to take on U.S. Radium. A total of five factory workers - Grace Fryer, Edna Hussman, Katherine Schaub, and sisters Quinta McDonald and Albina Larice - dubbed the Radium Girls, joined the suit. The litigation and media sensation surrounding the case established legal precedents and triggered the enactment of regulations governing labor safety standards, including a baseline of 'provable suffering'.

Historical impact

The Radium Girls saga holds an important place in the history of both the field of health physics and the labor rights movement. The right of individual workers to sue for damages from corporations due to labor abuse was established as a result of the Radium Girls case. In the wake of the case, industrial safety standards were demonstrably enhanced for many decades.

The case was settled in the autumn of 1928, before the trial was deliberated by the jury, and the settlement for each of the Radium Girls was $10,000 ($177,442 in today's terms) and a $600 per year annuity ($10,647 per year in today's terms) while they lived, and all medical and legal expenses incurred would also be paid by the company.

The lawsuit and resulting publicity was a factor in the establishment of occupational disease labor law. Radium dial painters were instructed in proper safety precautions and provided with protective gear; in particular, they no longer shaped paint brushes by lip, and avoided ingesting or breathing the paint. Radium paint was still used in dials as late as the 1960s.

Former factory site

Scientific impact

Robley D. Evans made the first measurements of exhaled radon and radium excretion from a former dial painter in 1933. At MIT he gathered dependable body content measurements from 27 dial painters. This information was used in 1941 by the National Bureau of Standards to establish the tolerance level for radium of 0.1 μCi (3.7 kBq).

The Center for Human Radiobiology was established at Argonne National Laboratory in 1968. The primary purpose of the Center was providing medical examinations for living dial painters. The project also focused on collection of information, and, in some cases, tissue samples from the radium dial painters. When the project ended in 1993, detailed information of 2,403 cases had been collected. No symptoms were observed in those dial painter cases with less than 1,000 times the natural ²²⁶Ra levels found in unexposed individuals, suggesting a threshold for radium-induced malignancies.

文學和電影

• 埃莉諾·斯旺森的詩作「鐳姑娘」（Radium Girls）講述了此事，該詩收錄於《A Thousand Bonds: 居里夫人發現鐳》（A Thousand Bonds: Marie Curie and the Discovery of Radium）（2003, ISBN 0-9671810-7-0）
• D. W. Gregory在戲劇《鐳姑娘》（Radium Girls）講述了Grace Fryer的故事，2000年該戲劇在新澤西州的Madison的劇作家劇院（the Playwrights Theatre）首演。

• There is an elaborate reference to the story in the Kurt Vonnegut novel Jailbird (1979, ISBN 0-385-33390-0)
• 詩人拉維妮婭·格林勞以「無辜的鐳」為題入詩（The Innocence of Radium）(Night Photograph, 1994)

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=6168

• 歷史學家克勞迪亞·克拉克在著作《鐳姑娘：1910年至1935年間的婦女和工業衛生體制改革》（Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910-1935）中寫了大量案例，揭示其更廣泛的歷史意義，該書於1997年出版

• Ross Mullner的著作 Deadly Glow: The Radium Dial Worker Tragedy 詳細描繪了此事。 (1999, ISBN 0-87553-245-4)

• The story is told by Jo Lawrence in her short animated film "Glow" (2007)

• 2007年的電影《致命核料 》引用了該故事
• The Michael A. Martone short story It's Time is told from the perspective of an unnamed Radium Girl

• A fictionalized version of the story was featured in the Spike TV show 1000 Ways to Die (#196) and Science Channel's Dark Matters: Twisted But True

• The Case of the Living Dead Women is a website displaying scans of 180 pages of newspaper clippings of the Ottawa, Illinois radium dial litigation

• Radium Halos: A Novel about the Radium Dial Painters a 2009 novel by Shelley Stout is historical fiction narrated by a sixty-five-year-old mental patient who worked at the factory when she was sixteen (ISBN 978-1448696222).

• Author Deborah Blum referenced the story in her 2010 book, The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.

• Author Robert R. Johnson features a story on the radium girls in his book Romancing the Atom. (ISBN 978-0313392795)

• The story is fictionalized in Melanie Marnich's stage play These Shining Lives.

See also

• Occupational disease
• Breaker boy
• Labor rights
• Labor history
• Labor law
• Susanne Antonetta
• Radioactive contamination
• Phossy jaw

References

• University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey - 'University Libraries Special Collections: U.S. Radium Corporation, East Orange, NJ', Records, Catalog 1917-1940 (Revised, June, 2003)
• Undark and the Radium Girls, Alan Bellows, December 28, 2006, Damn Interesting
• Radium Girls, Eleanor Swanson. copy of original
• Poison Paintbrush, Time, June 4, 1928. "That the world may see streaks of light through the long hours of darkness, Orange, N. J., women hired themselves to the U. S. Radium Corporation."
• Radium Women, Time, August 11, 1930. "Five young New Jersey women who were poisoned while painting luminous watch dials for U. S. Radium Corp., two years ago heard doctors pronounce their doom: one year to live."