There also were radium waters, suppositories, toothpastes, lipsticks and perfumes.ĭoctors and businessmen eager to make a buck claimed that radium could cure everything from arthritis and gout to constipation, impotence and cancer. There were super luxe, high-end radium “spas” where the rich and famous shelled out big bucks to cleanse and rejuvenate themselves with radium’s reputed magical, healthful effects.
Marie and Pierre Curie themselves suffered extreme burns from handling the element, and her prolonged exposure to its radiation ultimately killed her in 1934.īut despite the danger, radium became wildly popular with the public starting in the 1900s. “It causes horrible sores, which are difficult to heal, while it will heal some of the most malignant,’’ the San Bernardino County (Calif.) Sun noted in 1909. But it didn’t discriminate in the tissue it broke down. Scientists were aware it could break down human tissue, and it had a wide, early success with cancer patients it is still used today in cancer treatments. In 1903, the Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal wrote that radium might have the power to turn metal into gold - and lead to communication between planets.īut in reality, very little was known about it. It was the most powerful potential energy source that anyone had ever seen, even compared to a mythological super-being. Soon the world couldn’t get enough of it. She discovered the mysterious substance in 1898 while working in a wooden shed serving as a laboratory across a courtyard from the Sorbonne’s School of Physics in Paris, France. ‘My beautiful radium,’’ Marie Curie once said of the element that made her famous, earning her two Nobel Prizes. “It’s good for the people in the neighborhood and the people of Orange.’’ The playground that now stands on the site Richard Harbus “I think it’s a good idea they ,’’ resident Robin Laurent, 40, recently told The Post after learning of its past. Quietly tucked into a tree-lined residential neighborhood, it has been renamed High & Alden Street Park and features a playground - perhaps a fitting tribute to the young lives lost. Today, 100 years later, the young women’s bodies still glow in their graves, the effects of radiation poisoning.īut while their story is laden with tragedy, their deaths set the stage for one of the most famous workers-rights court cases in US history - and ultimately saved thousands of lives.įew if any residents in the town today know the history of the former plant site. Her body became racked by aches, and within two agonizing years, she was dead.
Then Maggia’s teeth started inexplicably to fall out.
#Where are the radium girls buried skin#
The fact that they were also sudden local celebrities - dubbed the “ghost girls’’ because of their ever-present green glowing skin - didn’t hurt, either.
#Where are the radium girls buried plus#
It was lucrative - plus painting glow-in-the-dark radium on soldiers’ wristwatch faces meant she and her young female co-workers were helping in the war effort. in Orange, NJ, in 1917, and at first reveled in her job. The 19-year-old woman started working at the Radium Luminous Materials Corp. Amelia “Mollie” Maggia was the first to die.
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