Wednesday, March 21, 2018

radium girls

My review of

The radium girls
Kate Moore
Simon & Schuster 2016
ISBN 978-14711-5387-7

is out in Chemistry & Industry, issue 2, page 43, with the very fitting headline:

Death watch

restricted access via SCI (premium content).

very scary stuff but also an inspiring story of women fighting for their rights and winning in the end, thereby saving hundreds of lives:

snippet:

Young women who had worked as dial painters during the war and then moved on to other things started dying of mysterious symptoms, but it took years before the dots were duly joined. In June 1925, the first male employee died and gained a dubious honour: His post-mortem marked the first time that radioactivity was detected in a human body.


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