This is a well researched and written account of the tragic lives and deaths of the young women who worked painting luminous dials for watches, clocks, and military instruments. During World War I and into the 1920s and 30s young women (the youngest was 14) were hired to paint radium paint onto the dials of the timepieces and other gauges. Most of the women worked in plants in New Jersey, but their also factories in other places including the small town of Ottawa, Illinois. Unbeknownst to the young women the radium was insidiously entering their bodies ultimately causing a variety of ailments and death. The companies involved denied, and later lied, that the paint was safe and the women's illnesses had nothing to do with their employment. After many failed court cases the women from Ottawa were finally successful and received a small amount toward their medical bills. The lawsuits led to the development of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Moore focuses on the lives and struggles of several of the women to personalize what could be a very dry story. As I said, this is a tragic story, and there were still industrial radium poisonings happening as late as 1978. I remember my father talking about the young women who died from painting watch dials when production of them finally ceased in the 1970s.
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