The Deformed Radium Girls

[ChaseLevi]

It was also worse than that. The radium girls were told to lick the tips of the brushes to make them pointy so they wouldn't accidently overpaint the numbers. Many, many died, and many more lost several limbs.

[legoyoda]

One guy was so addicted to a famous expensive product that was literally radium and water that he consumed so much of it his whole entire jaw area of his face fell clean off and his body and skeleton are in a led coffin because his bones still produce a CRAZY amount of radiation.

[creativespace]

After just watching Radioactive this hits different

[Alexis-bzkl]

There are some really fantastic movies that went into the stories of Marie Curie and even the Radium Girls. History is so important

[JSKB-hn]

Not a cool fact that some of you probably know but
Marie Curie was the first women to win a Nobel prize

[arievan]

moral of the story kids, don't mess around with radium

[Gentlemenpickleesq.]

They were literally encouraged to wet their brushes with their mouths

[Sakana]

I’m am currently reading the book The Radium Girls it’s a good book, if you’re interested in the Radium girls the book says a lot more about what happened and the justice for the girls and many others the book is written by Kate Moore

[ogpukas]

There was a guy who drank a lot of it thinking it would cure him and his jaw out of no where completely fell off the whole bottom jaw

[boriss.]

Don't forget the Match Girls getting Phos Jaw and the Hatter's too.. There is truth behind the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland! Oh and Lead based white face powder for women and Queen Elizabeth I who wrecked her face with that!

[ahobbit]

“Believing it was beneficial to their health” actually, their employers required them to lick the brushes to bring them to a point in order to produce a quality product and save time. Most of them died.

[AvengingFade]

THEY WOULD NOT LICK THE BRUSHES! Srry for yelling. They would lick their lips and then twirl the brushes on their pursed lips to “point” the brushes so that they could put a very fine dot on the watch faces they we’re working on and they should be remembered for dying and the company that employed them to do this went to great lengths to hide this fact! Most of them never saw and settlements or received much help from anyone. It’s utterly tragic!!!

[I_Harry_I]

Yea, one of them went to the doctor complaining of toothache and when he went to inspect her jaw it came of in his hand

[mayonnaise]

“And in some cases their jaws even came off—“

[innominepatris]

Imagine having been a tourist to visit the "atomic attractions" in Las Vegas

[istolejahresshipandilldoit]

The paint is still used on airplane instruments. The amount won't effect the pilots just so you know

[SpamBAT]

This was worded poorly. They were encouraged to twirl their paint brushes on their lips to make them pointy for fine painting, thus creating less waste and equipment from water or rags

[hopelovewright]

Most of the radium girls graves are still highly radiative to this day, even with lead coffins to try and contain it.

[TheZencast]

They'd lick the brushes to get a finer point bc they were high end watches

[boyboy]

I'd say that's a jawdropping thumbnail