Occupational Illnesses
Luminous Lives, Remarkable Legacy:
The Radium Girls' Fight for Workplace Rights and Employer Responsibilities
Around 1920, the Radium Girls began being diagnosed with fatal illnesses, including bone necrosis and cancer from the paint exposure. Some were in their early twenties, ready to start families, but were prevented by their deteriorating health.
Catherine Donohue
Letter to the priest asking for prayers for her radium poisoning. (Moore 368)
"A family grieves for a member in living death... Mrs. Catherine Donohue of Ottawa, Ill." (The Chicago Daily News 1938)
"Catherine Wolfe Donohue was one of several radium-poisoned women who died before their cases were finalized and many other suffering dial-painters never sued, but the cases are remembered as significant in the development of occupational safety and health standards." (Balkansky 2019)
"Radium Poisoning is Fatal to Girl." (New Britain Daily Herald 1927)
"Radium Poisoning Kills Young Bride." (New Britain Herald 1929)
"Radium-Caused Mortality Among Dial Painters and Other Workers of Essex County, New Jersey." (Mullner 146 & 147)
"Radium-Caused Mortality Among Dial Painter of New Haven County, Connecticut." (Mullner 148 & 149)
"Radium-Caused Mortality Among Dial Painters of LaSalle County, Illinois." (Mullner 150 & 151)
Their teeth would ache and eventually fall out. The resulting hole where the tooth had been would not heal and abscesses formed. They began to develop severe anaemia. Their bones went brittle. Eventually, jaw necrosis set in; their bone and tissue cells would be starved of blood and die.
(Bryan-Quamina 2023)
"A woman suffering from a Radium induced sarcoma (Collection of Ross Mullner)." (Jessica 2017)
"Mollie Maggia’s Radioactive Jawbone Removed by Knef." (Jessica 2017)
"Symptoms of radium poisoning in the dial painters, which would later become understood as radiation sickness, were sterility, cataracts, leukopenia, eosinophilia, leukemia, anemia, and menstruation issues."
(Versant Medical Physics and Radiation Safety)
"She did have a lot of her teeth that fell out and parts of her jawbone."
~ Personal interview with Darlene Halm, niece of Radium Girl Margaret Peg Looney. (2025)
"The effects of radium exposure." (Raven 2022)
"A picture of Marie Becker Rossiter. Her legs are disfigured from the radium" ~ Personal interview with Darlene Halm, niece of Radium Girl, Margaret Peg Looney. (2025)
"She did have multiple types of cancer over the years. She would have many surgeries so it dramatically affected her life as she got older. She had to have many serious operations. She would no sooner get rid of one form of cancer then she would get a different cancer. Once the illnesses started, it was 0ne after another, after another, until ultimately she lost her life because of those illnesses."
~ Personal interview with Lori Saliby, granddaughter of Adele Ruth, Radium Girl. (2025)
Clip from "Radium City" of Radium Girl. (Praeses & Soapbox Productions 1987)
(Monchard 2023)
"My body means nothing but pain to me."
~ Grace Fryer
(Moore 222)
(University of Calgary)
"The pain [I have] suffered could only be compared with the pain caused by a dentist drilling on a live nerve hour after hour, day after day, month after month."
~ Katherine Schaub
(Moore 92)
(The Radium Girls)
"The worst thing I have to put up with is not being able to sleep at night because of the pain in my hips."
~ Edna Hussman
(Moore 200)
(The Radium Girls)
"Trouble with my hip-both hips in fact. As to my ankles, I cannot wear a shoe for very long; I [have] terrible pains in my knees, one arm and shoulder."
~ Quinta Maggia McDonald
(Moore 203)
(The Radium Girls)
"I have spent at least $200 [$2,724] for x-rays, blood test, medicine, and medical attention, all to no avail."
~ Ella Eckert
(Moore 195)
(The Radium Girls)
"I am in constant pain. I cannot walk a block, but somehow I must carry on."
~ Catherine Donohue
(Moore 309)
(Jessica 2017)
"Pain to walk. Pain to just stand here, sometimes, it was that bad. I prayed to die and couldn’t die. Why would I want to live? I had so much pain.”
~ Marie Rossiter
(Moore 384)
(The Radium Girls)
“I’ll tell you how I feel, I’m just thirty-six, but I live like an old woman of seventy-five.”
~ Inez Vallat
(Moore 288)
(The Radium Girls)
"I am unable to enjoy life as a normal woman should."
~ Pearl Payne
(Moore 300)
Some of the Radium Girls’ offspring suffered from inherited cancer.
"I think one of the things people forget about are the effects of radiation exposure on future family members. My grandmother suffered from many forms of cancer and then later in life, my mother, her daughter, also experienced many forms of cancer. That is probably from effects that were passed through genetic mutations. It was not just the Radium Girls but it was their children and their children's children."
~ Personal interview with Lori Saliby, granddaughter of Adele Ruth, Radium Girl. (2025)
"Her younger siblings would come and pretty much almost carry her home… Then when she got home my aunts told me that she always felt bad because she would be so tired and feeling so poorly that she would have to lay down instead of helping her mother with the younger children."
~ Personal interview with Darlene Halm, niece of Radium Girl Margaret Peg Looney. (2025)