Any luminous watch made before 1970 is almost definitely coated in some amount of radium.Īccording to the EPA, radioactive antiques are still highly dangerous and were made more so by safety failures in the painting process: Rolex, Omega, Patek Philippe, and any major watchmaker used radium on their dials. Radium became more popular in the intervening years and almost every watch between 1917 and the early 1970s used a form of radium paint. These watches, called Trench Watches, had luminous faces for reading in the dark trenches along both sides of the battlefield and often featured big, bold numerals and hands to maximize the radium’s surface area. Radium was commonly used on many watches built during World War I. Read the book Radium Girls for more info on this topic. Horrible things happened to watchmakers who used the material in painting hands and numerals and devasting diseases like jaw and stomach cancer often plagued assembly-line workers in the days when radium was still in popular use. So I think Radium Girls were really whistleblowers of their time.Before we begin, please remember that radium is a dangerously radioactive substance and repeated exposure is very dangerous. “All of those issues are really turning into something that really requires a major collective force to stand up to. Asking the question ‘Is it safe to go back to work?’ Economies are being collapsed. You think about the way science is being denied and governments are turning away from the idea of people suffering, falling sick and dying. You think of COVID and radium as elements we don’t know everything about or they didn’t know everything about radium at the time. “I would say in the COVID crisis, there’s so many parallels, it’s really haunting. “When we were making the movie, we were thinking of events such as the Water Crisis in Flint, Michigan, or the way people talk about holding a cell phone up to your brain for hours on end. The significance of “The Radium Girls” being released in 2020:
Indeed it did prove that there was no syphilis, she died of radium poisoning.” “When they get home that night, they decide that it’s ultimately something that they have to do. And when the girls came to meet Catherine Riley, who was head of the National Consumers League in New Jersey, she suggested that the only real way to prove that radium poisoning was happening was to exhume a body and the girls were very disturbed by this idea. In real life, there were two sisters who had a third older sister who had died reportedly of syphilis. “As said in the film, syphilis is a diagnosis that not many would want to talk about, and that is actually how the radium poisoning was proven. Why the company’s doctor diagnosed the sick women with syphilis: The whole story is a true story and the court case that the girls ultimately mounted against the company is a notorious case that is still used today in arguing cases of toxic chemical litigation.” Radium,’ and we changed the name slightly. The true story behind the “American Radium” factory court case: 12 and it will be available for streaming later this year.
It’s currently showing at the Landmark Midtown Art Cinema through Nov. The film is based on true events of how a group of women discovered that their employers were deliberately withholding information about the dangers of the element.
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