Pod Insights Conspiracy Theories Painted with Poison: The Radium Girls Cover-Up About this episode They called them the "ghost girls" – young women who glowed in the dark after painting watches with radium. The company told them it was safe. They knew it wasn't. When the women started dying, the cover-up began: forged reports, fake doctors, lies on death certificates. The conspiracy nearly worked. But dying women make stubborn enemies.
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Transcript 0:07 Speaker 00 If you're not watching this video, you can't see me. And if you are watching this video, you also can't see me.
0:17 Speaker 00 Now, I am holding a couple glow sticks in my hands. One of those green ones, one of the blue ones you see at parties or on the 4th of July. Have you seen these things like this your whole life? Glow in the dark, stars on your ceiling, exit signs in every building. Totally harmless. Pretty, right? There's something almost magical about it. The stuff that makes this glow today is called strontium illuminate. Totally safe. Technically, you could eat it and it's likely nothing would happen, although I don't recommend it. But 100 years ago, this glow came from something else. Radium.
1:01 Speaker 00 It was everywhere, in toothpaste, face creams, health tonics. The public thought it gave them energy, cured their ailments, and made them beautiful. And during World War I, it was painted on watch dials so soldiers could tell time. In the dark trenches, pilots could read their instruments at night. It was helping win the war. The women who painted those watches were the envy of their town. They glowed when they walked. It was glamorous. It was the best job in town. And... It was killing them.
1:39 Speaker 00 Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. We would love to hear from you, so if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts, or check us out on Instagram at the conspiracy pod. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by Petivity. Every cat has a few unsolved mysteries. Why the 3 a.m. zoomies? What's so fascinating about that one empty box? And at mealtime, are they actually eating differently? Or does it just seem that way? The new Petivity Smart Feeder for cats turns everyday meals into meaningful health insights,
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3:55 Speaker 00 April 1917. An 18-year-old named Grace Friar walks through the doors of the United States Radium Corporation in Orange, New Jersey. It's her first day of work. The United States entered World War I just a few days ago. Grace has two brothers shipping out to fight. She wants to do her part. Her new job is painting numbers on watch dials with a new glow-in-the-dark paint. Soldiers in the trenches need to tell time on their watches without striking a match and giving away their position. Pilots flying at night need to read their instruments.
4:37 Speaker 00 It helps that the pay is excellent, three times what a factory girl usually makes. Grace can help support her family and help the war effort at the same time. When Grace walks onto the factory floor, it's not what she expects. It's bright and airy. Teenage girls sit at long tables chatting, laughing, and sharing sandwiches. It feels less like a factory and more like a social club. For a young woman in 1917, this is a dream. Most jobs available to working-class girls mean grueling factory floors or scrubbing other people's houses on your hands and knees.
5:21 Speaker 00 Dial painting is different. It's glamorous, it's fun, and the fastest workers earn more than their fathers. Grace's coworkers become her friends. They gossip about boys, they plan their weekends. Some of them are sisters, whole families work here. The Maggia sisters, the Carlo sisters. It's the kind of job you tell your friends about. She has no idea. Her dream job is a death sentence.
5:53 Speaker 00 In 1917, there's only one way to make something glow in the dark: radium. Radium is a radioactive element discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie back in 1898. On its own, it doesn't glow, but when you mix radium with zinc sulfide, it produces an eerie greenish luminescence. By the 1910s, Americans are obsessed with radium. Radium toothpaste promises whiter teeth. Radium face cream pledges to smooth wrinkles. It's even said to cure cancer. One drinkable product called Radathor is especially popular among the wealthy.
6:37 Speaker 00 After a famous golfer named Eben Byers gets injured, his doctor recommends he drink Radathor. Eben ends up drinking approximately 1,400 bottles over two years. He says it invigorates him and makes him a stronger athlete. Radathor markets it that way, too. It's basically the weedy cereal of the 1920s. If you're thinking, "Hey, Carter, isn't that dangerous?" You're absolutely right. Eben will eventually die in 1932, just five years after he started drinking Radathor. By that time, his jaw has disintegrated.
7:18 Speaker 00 What the public doesn't know is that radium is toxic. In 1903, Pierre Curie told an interviewer he wouldn't dare be in the same room as a large quantity of radium. It would burn his skin, destroy his eyesight, probably kill him. Marie Curie suffered radiation burns handling the stuff. She eventually dies from radium exposure.
7:46 Speaker 00 So, the scientists know. They've known for years. But in 1917, there's no internet, no evening news the way we know it today. Scientific journals don't reach the average American, and the companies selling radium products are spending a fortune on advertising. The marketing is so good that it drowns out the science. As far as the public is concerned, radium is magic. And one scientist figures out how to profit from that magic. He is a doctor named Saban Von Sashaki. In 1906, he studied under the Curies in Paris.
8:30 Speaker 00 So he knows better than most that radium is dangerous. Still, in 1913, back in the States, Von Sashaki figures out how to turn radium into a product. He develops a luminous paint, radium powder mixed with zinc sulfide, glue, and water. He calls it "Undark." Von Sashaki founds the "Radium Luminous Material Corporation" to manufacture it. The company later reorganizes as the "United States Radium Corporation," or USRC. And here's the kicker. By 1917, Von Sashaki himself is so heavily contaminated
9:14 Speaker 00 that his presence causes false readings in the lab. He dies years later, in 1928. He's 45 years old, one of his own product's victims. Still, they continue to manufacture Undark. And by 1917, the demand for glow-in-the-dark watches is so high, USRC opens a new factory in Orange, New Jersey.
9:43 Speaker 00 USRC needs workers to apply the paint. The watch faces are tiny, some barely wider than a thumbnail. The work requires small, steady hands and good eyes. So, they recruit young women like Grace Friar. Some as young as 14. Grace's supervisors walk her through the process. It's simple enough. You mix your own paint in a little container. You dip your camel hair brush in the mixture, then you paint the numbers on the watch dial. Grace's colleagues tell her the brushes lose their shape after a few strokes. So, here's the trick. To get a fine point, you put the brush between your lips. When the girls question whether it's safe to ingest,
10:29 Speaker 00 they're told it's totally harmless. Actually, it might even make them healthier. The girls accepted the answer, so they continued on. Lip, dip, paint. 250 dials a day. 6 to 14 brush licks per dial. That's over 1,000 times every single day that these women are putting radioactive paint in their mouths. Meanwhile, in a different part of the same building, the male chemists and scientists handle radium very differently.
11:11 Speaker 00 They use tongs and wear protective equipment. They know better than to let this stuff touch their skin, let alone put it in their mouths. Same company, same radium, two completely different sets of rules. But the dial painters don't know any of this. Like most of America, they see radium as a beauty product. Soon, the dial painters become the envy of every young woman in town. Because by the end of each shift, the women literally glow. The radium dust settles on their hair, their skin, and their clothes.
11:54 Speaker 00 They paint their fingernails and teeth with the stuff. They wear their best dresses to work, so the fabric will sparkle at the dance hall. They come to be known as the Ghost Girls. Because when they walk home at night, they shimmer in the dark. They have no idea what's making them glamorous is also killing them. By 1920, the glow starts to fade and something else takes its place. Dentists in Orange, New Jersey are suddenly flooded with patients, young women mostly.
12:35 Speaker 00 Loose teeth, painful jaws, infections that won't heal, tooth extractions that never close up. One by one, the Ghost Girls are getting sick. One of them is Molly Magia. She's 24 years old, one of seven sisters, four of them worked at the factory together. Molly is good at her job. She's been painting dials for a few years and is a top earner. In 1921, she visits her dentist with a toothache. He pulls the tooth, routine procedure. But then the next tooth starts hurting, and the next.
13:18 Speaker 00 Eventually, her teeth start falling out on their own. Instead of healing, painful ulcers bloom in the empty sockets. The infection spreads to her jaw. One day, her dentist gently prods what remains of Molly's jawbone. To his horror, it breaks apart in his fingers. He removes it, not through surgery, but simply by lifting it out of her mouth. On September 12, 1922, Molly Magia bleeds to death from a massive hemorrhage. She's 24 years old. Her death certificate lists the cause.
14:03 Speaker 00 A syphilis. Now Molly isn't an isolated case. She's just the first. Over the next two years, more women get sick. Same symptoms: loose teeth, aching jaws, bones that won't heal. By 1924, 50 women who worked at the orange factory are severely ill. 12 have died. Dentists are noticing patterns. Families are demanding answers. USRC is at a crossroads. They can admit the paint is poisoning their workers, or they can protect the factory. The question is,
14:45 Speaker 00 which matters more to them? Stay with us.
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16:55 Speaker 00 So, how do you cover up a workplace epidemic? If you're Arthur Roder, President of the United States Radium Corporation, you start by controlling the narrative. He'd already had some success on that front. A few years earlier, he was part of a campaign to push Sabin von Sashaki, the inventor of Undark and founder of USRC, out of his own company. Once he was gone, Roder slipped in as president. By 1924, Roder has a serious problem. Women are dying. Dentists are noticing patterns. Questions are being asked.
17:38 Speaker 00 He needs to get ahead of this thing. So what does he do? He reaches out to Harvard. If he can get a respected scientist to say the deaths have nothing to do with his factory, everyone will believe it. Cecil Drinker and his wife Catherine are researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health. They're respected and credible. In early 1924, Roder invites them to inspect the orange factory. They examine the workers. They collect dust samples and test the air. What they find terrifies them. Of course, they know there's radium in the factory. That's what the paint is made of.
18:22 Speaker 00 But the drinkers aren't prepared for how much. The place is saturated. Cecil Drinker later writes that dust samples collected throughout the workroom, even from chairs not used by the workers, glow in the dark. The drinkers also examine the workers themselves. They see the glowing dresses, the shiny hair. One woman has glowing spots on her legs and thighs. Another's back glows almost to the waist. They conclude the radium isn't just on them, it's in them. The drinkers submit their report in the summer of 1924.
19:06 Speaker 00 Their conclusion: "Radium is almost certainly causing the illnesses. They recommend immediate safety precautions." This is not what Roder wants to hear. He pressures the drinkers into not publishing their report publicly. The Harvard School of Public Health depends partly on USRC funding, so the drinkers don't want to sour that relationship. When they push back anyway, Roder threatens to sue. After that, the drinkers back down and agree to keep their findings private. But Roder isn't satisfied with silence.
19:50 Speaker 00 He needs the opposite to prove the factory is safe. And then he does something that crosses the line from negligence into conspiracy. Roder takes the drinkers' report, the one that says the factory is dangerous, and rewrites it. He changes the damning conclusion to glowing praise. He claims a contagious infection must be to blame for the girls getting sick. At the factory, he says, quote, "Every girl is in perfect condition." Then, he submits this forged document to the New Jersey Department of Labor in the drinkers' name, without the drinkers' knowledge.
20:36 Speaker 00 And that should be the end of it. Roder has won. He's silenced Harvard. He's got a forged report on file with the government. The perfect cover up. Except, there's one person Roder didn't account for. Her name is Alice Hamilton, a colleague of The Drinkers and a pioneering expert on industrial diseases. Through her contacts at the National Consumers League, Hamilton learns that USRC has submitted The Drinkers' report to the government, but the version they submitted shows the factory is safe.
21:15 Speaker 00 Hamilton tells The Drinkers what she's found, and Cecil Drinker realizes he's been used. His name is on a lie. A lie that's helping kill people. Cecil no longer cares about losing funding. He cares about saving people. So he ignores USRC's legal threats and publishes his original report in August 1925. So now the truth is out there, published in a medical journal. Anyone can see what The Drinkers discovered at the factory. But here's the problem. A medical journal only goes so far. It's not a government order.
21:59 Speaker 00 USRC can just ignore it, hire their own experts to dispute it, call it one scientist's opinion. And that's exactly what they do. There's no government investigation, no shutdown, and no arrests. The company keeps operating, and the girls keep licking radium off of their paintbrushes. But then, something happens that's harder to ignore. On June 7, 1925, USRC's own chief chemist, a man named Dr. Edwin Lehman, dies. Same symptoms as the dial painters.
22:43 Speaker 00 Okay, now here's what's important. Edwin Lehman is a scientist. He's not some teenage girl from the factory floor. When the dial painters got sick, the company could dismiss them.
22:57 Speaker 00 Hysterical women, weak constitutions, promiscuous girls with syphilis. But Edwin Lehman, he's one of them. He's educated and credible. He's, well, let's face it, a man. Lehman's death forces the county physician, a pathologist named Dr. Harrison Martland, to get involved. He performs the autopsy on Lehman. When he tests Lehman's bones, he finds that they're radioactive, extremely radioactive. And Martland doesn't stop there. He develops tests to detect radium in living people.
23:40 Speaker 00 He starts examining the sick dial painters. He measures the radiation in their breath, bones and organs. Now, this is different from the Drinkers Report. This isn't an observation of glowing bodies. This is scientific measurement, numbers that can show how much radiation is in these women's bodies. So, now there's a published Harvard report, a dead company scientist, and a county physician with hard data. That much evidence inspires the first dial painter to sue USRC. In 1925, Marguerite Carlo files a lawsuit against the company. She's 23 years old.
24:23 Speaker 00 Her sister, who also worked at the factory, has already died from radiation poisoning. Marguerite is dying too, and she knows it. She sues for $75,000, about a million dollars today. USRC's response is to change the classification to a workman's compensation case, not a full lawsuit against the company. Radium poisoning isn't even listed as a compensable disease. The case will automatically fail.
24:57 Speaker 00 Marguerite dies on December 26th, 1925. She never sees the inside of courtroom. Her family eventually settles for $9,000, a fraction of what she asked for, and they have to sign a release protecting USRC from any future claims from their family. This is what the women are up against. They have proof, they have dying bodies, but they don't have power. USRC can hire the best lawyers, they can manipulate the law to their benefit. The system is built to protect companies, not workers.
25:39 Speaker 00 And while all of this is happening, the factory is still running. New girls are still being hired and told to lick their brushes. USRC knows the legal system will protect them, so they double down. When sick dial painters seek medical attention, USRC arranges for them to be examined by a man named Frederick Flynn. Flynn claims to be a toxicologist from Columbia University. But Flynn has no medical license. He's not even a doctor.
26:19 Speaker 00 He's an industrial consultant on USRC's payroll. His job is to examine the dying women and tell them, "They're fine. Get back to work. Lick those paintbrushes." It's all a ruse, part of a coordinated campaign of disinformation. And USRC's most cynical tactic involves the women who are already dead. Remember Molly Magia, the first dial painter to die? Remember how her death certificate lists the cause as syphilis? That isn't a mistake. It's deliberate.
27:05 Speaker 00 USRC encourages doctors to list syphilis as the cause of death for dial painters. Now, think about what that means. In the 1920s, syphilis is shameful. It's associated with promiscuity, prostitution, and moral failures. By pinning syphilis on the dead women, USRC isn't just deflecting blame. They're assassinating the character of their own victims. USRC has buried the evidence, silenced the scientists, smeared the dead. And they have one more advantage: time.
27:49 Speaker 00 The women are dying. All the company has to do is wait them out. What they don't know is that dying women make stubborn enemies. Stay with us.
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29:07 Speaker 00 Okay, let's go back to Grace Friar, the eager 18-year-old from the beginning of our story. By 1925, she's falling apart. Her spine is deteriorating. She has to wear a steel back brace just to sit up. Her jaw is crumbling. She's had 20 operations. She's working at a bank now, running her department, but she can barely move her left arm. Grace knows what's killing her. She's read the drinker's report. She's talked to her former coworkers. They're all experiencing the same symptoms. So Grace decides to sue. There's just one problem. She can't find a lawyer.
29:50 Speaker 00 USRC is a defense contractor with deep pockets and powerful connections. The statute of limitations for workplace injuries in New Jersey is just two years, and Grace left the company five years ago. Most lawyers tell her the case is unwinnable. Grace spends two years searching for representation. Two years while the radium continues to eat away at her bones. Finally, in 1927, she finds a young Newark attorney named Raymond Berry, who agrees to take the case. Four other women join Grace as plaintiffs: Edna Hussman, Katherine Schob,
30:35 Speaker 00 and two of Molly's sisters, Quinta McDonald and Albina Larisse. Together, the five women sue USRC for $250,000 each in damages, over $4.5 million in 2026 money. Here's the thing about those sisters, Quinta, Albina, and Molly. They had all worked at USRC. Molly is already dead, and you remember what her death certificate said? Syphilis. Berry knows that if they can prove that's a lie, they can prove the whole cover-up. So he convinces the Maggia family to let him exhume Molly's body.
31:17 Speaker 00 It's not an easy ask, dig up your sister's grave, but Quinta and Albina agree. They want a clear Molly's name and they want justice. October 15th, 1927, a gray fall day, five years after Molly's death. A small crowd gathers at Rosedale Cemetery in Orange, New Jersey. There's doctors, lawyers, company representatives, reporters. When they pull up the coffin, it's waterlogged and falling apart. They run ropes and chains underneath it. Slowly, they raise it to the surface.
31:58 Speaker 00 And in the dim afternoon light, even through the rotting wood, the inside of the coffin is glowing. They take Molly's remains to a nearby funeral home. The autopsy lasts hours. They test every tissue sample, every bone fragment. All of it, every piece of her, is radioactive. Her body contains 500 times the amount of radium that would later be set as a safe limit. No syphilis, just radium. The company's lie is exposed. Her sisters finally have proof.
32:43 Speaker 00 Meanwhile, Raymond Berry has found a way to get around these statute of limitations. He argues that the two-year timer starts when the girls were diagnosed with radium poisoning, not when they left the company. Now, remember, many of the girls were thought to have syphilis or other diseases. It wasn't until Edwin Lehman, the chief scientist, died that doctors even considered the possibility of radium poisoning. Some of the girls didn't get their formal diagnosis until May 1927. When Raymond Berry makes his argument, it's June 1927, well, under the statute of limitations.
33:26 Speaker 00 So the case is allowed to go forward. In January 1928, the radium girls make their first court appearance. Two of the women are bedridden. None of them can raise their arms to take the oath. Grace Fryer is unable to walk and has lost all her teeth. The press goes wild. Newspapers across the country cover the case. They dubbed the women "The Radium Girls" and "The Living Dead." And as the case unfolds, damning details emerge, including the fact that in the same
34:06 Speaker 00 building where the dial painters were told to lick their brushes, the company's scientists were protecting themselves with lead screens, tongs, and masks. Same building, same radium. One group gets protection, the other gets told the paint is harmless. The hypocrisy enrages the public. Raymond Berry then runs into his next problem in April, three months into the trial. Cecil Drinker, the Harvard scientist who found radium in dozens of dust samples from the factory, refuses to testify.
34:47 Speaker 00 So does Dr. Harrison Martland, the pathologist who developed tests to detect radium in living people. Now, it's not clear exactly why the scientists refused. Maybe they were intimidated by USRC. Maybe they just didn't want to get involved. Either way, they were Berry's smoking guns. He needs an expert to testify that the factory caused the girls to develop radium poisoning. And he needs one fast, because the five plaintiffs have just been given only months to live.
35:26 Speaker 00 And luckily, he finds a physicist named Elizabeth Hughes. She's trained in Dr. Martlin's methods. She knows how to measure radiation. Using an electroscope, she tests the breath of all five women. She confirms exactly what Dr. Martlin found, that the girls ingested so much radium at the factory that their breath is radioactive. More importantly, she's willing to testify. On the witness stand, Hughes explains something that has yet to be made public.
36:06 Speaker 00 At almost every other research institution, scientists are required to follow strict safety protocols when handling radioactive materials. They have to wear protective gear and use forceps to grab the radium. At USRC, the women not only weren't protected, but they were encouraged to put the radium in their mouths. Hughes' testimony makes international headlines. The tide of public opinion turns decisively against USRC. When the company asks for a months-long postponement, claiming their experts will be traveling
36:48 Speaker 00 abroad, newspaper columnists erupt with outrage. These women are dying. Every delay could mean another death before the trial concludes. Facing a public relations disaster, USRC decides to settle out of court. Each of the five women receives $10,000, equivalent to about $190,000 today. They also receive a $600 annual pension for life, plus coverage of all medical expenses is a fraction of what they asked for. But they're dying. They need the money now.
37:32 Speaker 00 Within five years of the settlement, Grace Friar, Catherine Schob, and Quinta McDonald all die from radium poisoning. Edna Hussman dies in 1939. Albina Larisse, the longest survivor of the group, dies in 1946. None of them live to see old age. The case makes headlines across the world. The public is outraged, and the radium girls are celebrated as heroes. But here's what doesn't happen. The country doesn't pass any new laws or impose regulations on USRC. There are still
38:17 Speaker 00 no federal standards for workplace safety. USRC pays a settlement, but they don't admit wrongdoing. And radium dial painting is still completely legal, which means it's still happening. The whole time the lawsuits were working their way through the courts, there was another factory a thousand miles away in Ottawa, Illinois, the Radium Dial Company. They have the same paint, the same brushes, the same technique: lip-dip-paint.
39:01 Speaker 00 They opened in 1922, the same year Molly Magia died. While women in New Jersey had their teeth falling out, women in Illinois were showing up for their first day of work. While Grace was searching for a lawyer, these women were licking brushes. And while the USRC case was making headlines across the country, radium dial was telling its workers not to worry. "The problem in New Jersey," they said, "was..."
39:30 Speaker 00 Impure radium. Their radium is totally safe. You can probably guess what's happening to those Illinois workers. Same paint, same symptoms. And the company knows this. Radium Dial has been screening employees for radium poisoning for three years. They have test results showing dangerous levels of radiation in their workers' bodies, but they never share the results with the workers themselves. One of those workers is Catherine Wolf Donahue. She starts painting dials in 1922, the same year the Ottawa factory opens.
40:15 Speaker 00 She's 19 years old. By 1925, she's limping from pain. By 1931, her condition has deteriorated so much that the company fires her, quote, "because her limping is causing much talk." Over the next few years, Catherine watches as other dial painters get sick and die. She loses half her body weight. Parts of her jaw fall out. She becomes nearly bedridden. Local doctors failed to diagnose her, but a Chicago doctor confirms the truth. She's dying of radium poisoning.
40:56 Speaker 00 In 1935, Catherine and four other women tried to sue the Radium Dial Company. But remember the statute of limitations problem from New Jersey? Illinois has the same issue, and it's even worse. Their laws don't cover poison such as radium. The case is dismissed. But Illinois lawmakers have been paying attention to what happened in New Jersey. In 1936, they passed the Illinois Occupational Disease Act to cover industrial poisoning from radium.
41:33 Speaker 00 But here's the catch. The new law isn't retroactive. It only protects future workers. Catherine and the other sick women are out of luck. They try again anyway. In 1937, they find an attorney named Leonard Grossman, who agrees to take the case for free. He brings it to the Illinois Industrial Commission. He argues that even though the poisoning happened before the law was changed and the statute of limitations has passed, the radium is still in the women's bodies. It's still damaging them every single day.
42:15 Speaker 00 The statute timer in Illinois starts when the injury occurs. But if the injury is ongoing, how can the statute have expired? It works. The commission agrees to hear the case. By now Catherine is dying. She weighs less than 60 pounds. During one session, when a doctor testifies that her condition is fatal, Catherine collapses. She has to be carried from the room. So the commission does something unprecedented. They continue the trial at her bedside. Picture it.
42:59 Speaker 00 A dying woman lying on her couch in her modest house. Lawyers, an arbitrator, her family, all crowded into her living room. Catherine, holding up pieces of her own jawbone that have fallen out. On April 5th, 1938, the commission rules in Catherine's favor. She's awarded back pay, medical expenses, and an annual pension of $277 for the rest of her life. The radium dial company fights back. They appeal to the Illinois courts. And when that doesn't work, they appeal to the US Supreme Court.
43:44 Speaker 00 They lose every single time.
43:49 Speaker 00 Katherine Donahue dies on July 27, 1938, the day after Radium Dial files yet another appeal. She's 35 years old. She never sees the final outcome. Today, the sites of the old radium factories are EPA Superfund cleanup zones. The ground is still contaminated. Some of it may never be fully cleaned. The half-life of radium is 1,600 years. And the radium girls themselves, many of them are still glowing in their graves. It cost them their lives.
44:34 Speaker 00 But slowly, things change. Radium dial painting doesn't disappear overnight. It continues through WWII, but the lip pointing stops and workers get protective equipment. Eventually, radium gets replaced altogether. Today, if I crack open this glow stick, I don't have to worry about it harming me. So, what do we make of this story? On one level, this is a tale of corporate greed and callous disregard for human life. The executives at USRC and Radium Dial know their workers are being poisoned. They choose profits over people. They lie.
45:18 Speaker 00 They cover up, they destroy evidence, and they smear the reputations of dying women. There's no shadowy cabal here, no secret society, just people with information deciding who else gets to have it. That's a conspiracy that shows up more often than you'd think. The people who know, choosing silence. The people with power, deciding the truth would cost them too much.
45:50 Speaker 00 On another level, it's a story of remarkable courage. Women like Grace Fryer and Catherine Donahue, their bodies literally falling apart, refuse to stay silent. They fight for years against powerful corporations. Many of them die before seeing the outcome of their lawsuits. But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the story is how easily it almost stays hidden. The companies come terrifyingly close to getting away with it. If Alice Hamilton hadn't discovered the forged report, if Raymond Berry hadn't agreed to take the case,
46:34 Speaker 00 if Elizabeth Hughes hadn't provided irrefutable scientific evidence, how many other industrial poisonings happen that we never learn about? How many workers die with syphilis on their death certificates when the real cause is their employer's negligence? The radium girls change all of that because their cases are among the first in American history where a company is held liable for the occupational health of its employees. It establishes something we might take for granted.
47:16 Speaker 00 Employers have a legal responsibility for their workers' health. Before these women, that wasn't a given. Now, it is. In 1970, partly as a result of the radium girls' legacy, Congress creates the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA. Today, every worker who puts on safety goggles, every employee who reads a chemical warning label, every person who benefits from workplace safety regulations, they owe a debt to the radium girls.
48:00 Speaker 00 Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram @TheConspiracyPod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts. For more information on The Radium Girls, amongst the many sources we used, we found the book The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore and reporting by the Harvard School of Public Health, extremely helpful to our research. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story. And the official story isn't always the truth.
48:45 Speaker 00 This episode was written and researched by Chelsea Wood, fact-checked by Sophie Kemp, and engineered, video-edited, and sound-designed by Alex Button. I'm your host, Carter Roy.
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