2018 - Book 4

Yes, it was good. I read it in half a day. The same day I brought it home from the library. I started after lunch and finished around 10:30 p.m.

This reminded me of the feeling I had reading King Leopold's Ghost or Blowback (two books that I highly recommend).  It really makes it clear how corrupt society is. It makes me wonder how anything works (governments, families, companies, etc.).  And it makes me doubt what anyone states as fact. 

This story is about many of the girls that painted the dials for watches (seen on the front cover) and dials for airplanes during WWI.  They used radium in the paint to make the dials glow in the dark. They came home from work covered in the dust and glowing.  They would paint it on their faces. But worst of all, they used their mouths to create a thinner point on their paintbrushes to apply the paint to the watch faces. 

Radium would deposit in their bones and slowly eat away their bodies from the inside out. Often they wouldn't have symptoms for a few years. Radium was the wonder drug; doctors were prescribing it for health, people were bathing in it, water glasses were made with it. No one believed them when they fell ill that it had to do with the material in the plant. But so many of them fell ill that finally they connected the dots.  This books tells the story of how they fought for justice (spoiler: many of them never got it). 

If you do read this book, read all the way to the end (all the epilogues). The stories of how many of them donated their bodies to science after they died is fascinating.  

Pages: 408