#the radium girls

[bethanydelleman]

I had tears pouring down my cheeks while I was driving home this morning because I listened to a podcast about the Radium Girls and how hard they fought to hold their employer to account for poisoning them, even though they knew they would die regardless, because they wanted to protect the workers who came after them. Even though their community called them liars and they were in horrible pain, they fought. And then the host started talking about how the Manhattan Project used knowledge gained from the Radium Girls to protect their workers and how the ghosts of those girls and women protected people going forward...

And it made me think of all the ghosts, unnamed and unknown, who in their death protect us: the ghosts of the Titanic, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the Quebec Bridge, and so many others. Disasters that made us change laws and protect people, not just because they were horrific but because survivors and survivors families demanded that we change; kept screaming and fighting and pushing until someone listened and something was fixed.

What a debt we owe.

[orchid-merryweather]

My brain: be normal be normal be normal be normal be normal this person could be your friend don't fuck it up please be normal

Me: so yeah in world war one soldiers couldn't see the faces of normal watches when in the trenches when it got dark so there were watches made with luminous paint so they could see the numbers. The problem was that this luminous paint was made from radium and they were all hand painted, and the painters who were all women because all the men were at war had to use these special brushes when painting that had a superfine tip but to keep the tip pointed they'd have to point the brush with their lips and what that means is that they put the tips of the brushes in their mouths and by doing that they all ended up injesting some of the radium. The radium then got deposited in their bones and made them horribly sick, like their jawbones started disintegrating in their mouths and when that caused them to lose teeth the wounds from the lost teeth never healed properly and then would get infected and they also got tumors and they lost a bunch of weight and became really weak and all kinds of horrible things because of radiation poisoning. At first nobody thought that this could've been from the radium because it was believed to be a kind of magical cure all. And when some people started to suppose that it could be related to the radium many people didn't believe them and those of the women who were still alive and well enough and brave enough to try to earn compensation for their illness faced an extremely hard time. They were viewed as greedy liars and were shunned in their communities for it and when a doctor of the girls said that the condition of radium poisoning was fatal and without any cure the hearing had to be halted because one of the girls just about fainted in the court room. Eventually these girls were lucky enough to win their case and they were compensated for their illness and doctor visits and that some of them had to pay nannies because they were physically unable to care for their kids, some of the girls managed to live happy lives after this despite their condition but one of them died pretty much directly after she was informed that they won the case. Other women that sued their employers for them having gotten radium poisoning were given compensation so little that it was insulting and others didn't even win their cases or settle out of court and they got nothing. This was when workers protection and compensation laws didn't do anything and those of the women and their lawyers that got compensation had to fight tooth and nail to get anything. And many of the women died without ever knowing what was wrong with them and getting misdiagnoses ranging from doctors doing their best with what information they had and diagnosing them with phosphorus poisoning to downright insulting and absolute preposterous diagnosises of syphilis. These women were in some places called ghost girls for the way they literally glowed when they left their jobs because of the radium paint and radium powder they ended up covered in, the nickname "ghost girls" ended up having a different meaning though, because of what the radium poisoning did to their bodies. There are/were also more widely called the radium girls because obviously of their relationship with radium and I read this book about them and

[100-great-books]

[aquakat-draws]

Yes,you may infodump about ross' design :]

I have the same urge to do that no?

Alright, i hope you have the patience to read because its soooo long.

So the first time I wanted to design ross I came up with a chicken monster type of thing, which immediately got dumped because it was H I D E O U S and not what I wanted. So I went and searched on pinterest in hopes of finding something. His design was like the most fucking hard and time consuming one. But eventually I came up with some good references and designed something I'll call the alpha design, which was posted.

His anatomy does not make any sense at all because I wanted to convey how much he was messed up in the experiments. But then over time I found out ways to make him look even more messed up, which he got his beta design, that was also posted

But then comes the third design, which he doesn't change a lot. He lost the tail, lost the magic powers, the bloody phase, but he was allowed to keep his tentacles :D

At first I wanted to give him the ability to like. Use his whole body as a mouth (yknow like grow giant mouths from everywhere) but that idea got dumped because again, he looked so monstrous and fucked up, which wasn't something I was going for. Then I went to be able to climb the wall and ceiling like a gecko, and it also got dumped because he was starting to look like a gecko, while i wanted him to not resemble a specific animal too much. I was stuck on the powers, until I discovered:

Radium!!!!

I realized I had completely forgotten about radiation stuff (mostly because I wanted to avoid mutation clichés)

But let me tell you, it goes just like that persian idiom where we say "without thinking, there's suffering". I knew a minority about radium from my web surfing phase, so I decided to dive into it, discovering the stuff about radium girls etc, the compounds that radium makes, and basically radiology itself

So, Ross's abilities are very much inspired by this beautiful but deadly element. Take his radium nitride healing, for example

At first I wanted him to radiate radium, but then it was dumped (because obviously I don't want him to be lethal to others, and especially give them a painful death with radium poisoning). So instead, certain parts of his body (e.g: tears, eyes, spikes, tentacles, fingertips, toes, etc) can give people some good ol' chemical burns. He can sabotage some devices just by being scared (he radiates a little more dose of radiation when he's panicked). And he doesn't practically glow in the dark from everywhere like pure radium, as we know radium immediately reacts with nitrogen in air and air is like made of 78 fucking percent nitrogen, only his eyes and insides (and by extension, through the mouth) can glow because they have less exposure to air

But remember that he isn't purely based on radium since we definitely know being in the same room with just like a milligram of it can literally kill us. I simply took inspiration and twisted reality because I can and want >:)

But he's still squishy and huggable as always, and his hair is still fluffy and rufflable (even though not even myself as the creator can't distinguish it) :D

Boiii this was long have fun reading it TwT

(Don't know where to add this but he can't switch to his human form before he gains magic)

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[misstenou]

Babe, what's wrong? You've barely licked your radium dipped paintbrush.

[inkandarsenic]

there is a special place in hell for all of the corporate radium executives, and especially for Joseph Kelly

[105nt]

If you like a book that leaves you weeping and shaking and seething internally then you'll love this. 😭

[demonic-mnemonic]

Read a few chapters of The Radium Girls before falling asleep... In completely unrelated news, I dreamed about trying to beat an executive to death with my bare fists

[starlightshadowsworld]

Don't read the Radium girls by Kate Moore if you have anger issues.

And even if you don't, it will give you them.

Just how many people hid the truth behind Radium and it costing these girls everything.

Makes me want to both cry and punch a wall.

[jewellerbynight]

My essay has a word limit of 800 and I forgot to pay attention to the word count so when I submitted the rough draft for approval I didn't realise that it was over 1,600 words. I've straight up spent more time trimming it down to 800 than I did researching the topic and writing it. The radium girls were my special interest like six years ago, and now I'm not allowed to go over two pages of writing? Boo

[dustydolls]

Everyone should read The Radium Girls by Kate Moore. The heartbreak I’m feeling right now is something I cannot describe. This is not only a tribute to dial-painters who fell ill and died due to radium exposure, but it’s a story about medical misogyny, neglectful corporations, exploitation and female friendships all at once. I’ll be forever praying with these girls in mind. Thanking them for not giving up and for changing history forever. The glowing angels.

[aquakat-draws]

Prompt: Radiation (yep I'm not going on order but WHO CARES it's my list and I do what I want lol)

I just love drawing zubin in those early 20th century clothes and... getting radiation poisoning? Idk but I love it

[nosferatumadre]

I'm 5 hours into listening to The Radium Girls audiobook and y'all...

Fuck the United States Radium Corporation

[rachel-sylvan-author]

Fiction - Nonfiction Pairing Radium Girls Fiction: "Zorrie" by Laird Hunt Nonfiction: "The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women" by Kate H. Moore

[muffinapologist]

Speaking of engaging nonfiction, and on a less hostile note, I highly recommend The Radium Girls. Reading it made me, for the first time, understand anti-vaxxers (note: understand, not agree with.) I still can’t understand why someone would rather their child get polio than have autism but. I *do* understand the distrust of the medical system. Because doctors and pharmaceutical companies do have a history of ignoring the wellbeing of people in favor of profit. And the radium girls are just one example.

Of course, engaging critically means that there was a clear profit incentive to pretend that radium was harmless. Whereas there really isn’t a profit incentive to lie about vaccines—well, not to lie about them working that is. Peddling conspiracy theories is Very profitable. As is convincing people Covid is not a big deal. ‘Just get back to work, get back to consuming. It’s fine Covid is *totally* over.’ That’s the connection I see to history.