In 1917, the U.S. Radium Corporation began hiring women and girls as young as 14 to paint the dials on their watches. They used a special radium paint called Undark. The corporation sold the watches to the U.S. military for a huge profit. The girls made 1.5 cents per dial. It was good money back then. Plus, glowing in the dark made these patriotic young women popular.

They became known as the ghost girls.

As you can imagine, working with radium is dangerous. This wasn’t a case of naivety. Scientists already knew the danger of radium. Chemists at the U.S. Radium Corporation wore protective gear when handling the stuff. And yet, the ghost girls were told it was completely safe.

Not only were the ghost girls told not to worry, but the Radium Corporation deliberately deprived them of the rags and rinse solution they needed to clean their brushes. They thought it was too expensive. Instead, managers told them to wet their brushes by licking them between dials.

They called it lip pointing.

Of course, the general public thought radium was good for you.

Radium was the goop of the day.

In the 1910s and 20s, you could go to a radium spa. You could do radium cleanses. You could irradiate your junk to restore your lost manhood. Schools used radium byproducts as sand on playgrounds. Radium was used in everything from toothpaste to hemorrhoid cream. Countless grifters founded sketchy little companies claiming to sell “authentic” radium products. Did I mention scientists already knew radium was bad for you? They knew it was useful, but it was dangerous. You had to be careful with it.

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