At the height of WW1, radium was used in makeup, jewelry and paints. It was used to handpaint the faces of watches that glowed in the dark. These were very popular at the time, and many watches were sent to soldiers during the war. The factories that made the watches in Orange, New Jersey, were THE place for young girls to work. They made great money and had a busy social life.
In order to paint the watches, the girls were taught to dip the brush in the paint (mixed with radium), then put it in their mouth to make a very fine point on the brush, then paint. The girls thought this was great, because they went home glowing, literally. They were nicknamed the Ghost Girls because they glowed in the dark. Some girls even painted radium paint on their teeth and faces for dates!
In 1922 Mollie Maggia began to develop tooth problems. Her decline was quick and painful, losing all her teeth, her jaw, and developing absesses in her mouth. She wasn't the only one. Several other girls developed similar symptoms. They all died. The coroner could not figure out what was wrong with Mollie, so they listed her death as syphillis.
It wasn't until lawsuits were brought against the parent company USRC, that things began to change. After many tries, one woman won her lawsuit in 1932. Victory led to more stringent safety standars for dial painters and well as later workers on the atomic bomb. Although radium had been suspected of causing these horrific symptoms for some time, it took multiple lawsuits and over a decade, to finally change things. It was too late for the Ghost Girls, but in 1927 the body of Mollie Maggia was exhumed, and it was determined that she did in fact die from radium poisoning. Five years after her death, her body still glowed with a soft luminescence.
By the way, Marie Curie herself died of radium poisoning, and her notebooks are still too radioactive to handle!
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