The Radium Girls

Moore reconstructs the true story of the "dial painters" — young women hired by watch-dial factories in New Jersey, Illinois, and Connecticut to paint luminous numerals with radium-laced paint, taught to twirl their brushes to a fine point between their lips thousands of times a day. The companies knew, from their own scientists' internal findings, that radium was dangerous, yet told the women it was harmless — even beneficial — while male chemists in the same buildings worked behind protective lead screens. As the women's bones crumbled, jaws rotted, and bodies filled with radioactive decay, the companies spent years denying any connection, hiring doctors to produce favorable diagnoses, and burying evidence.

It matters because this is one of the founding stories of American occupational health and safety law: the dial painters' relentless, years-long legal fight — pursued while visibly dying — forced courts and legislatures to recognize a worker's right to sue over slow industrial poisoning, not just sudden injury, and helped establish the modern framework of workplace safety regulation and disclosure. Their case remains a template for how corporate power resists accountability and how ordinary people, with almost no resources, can eventually break through it.

Who should read it

Readers drawn to labor history, corporate accountability, and the origins of workplace safety law will find this a gripping and enraging entry point. It also rewards anyone interested in how scientific knowledge gets suppressed or weaponized by institutions with financial incentive to ignore it.

About the author

Kate Moore is a British author and editor who spent years researching primary sources, court records, and survivor accounts to write this 2016 narrative history, which became a bestseller and was adapted for stage.