The Radium Girls - book club discussion

[ufcasey]

Welcome to the 3rd book club discussion of 2018! Everyone is welcome to join in at any time

This month's pick is The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore

Just to help get you thinking, if you have a hard time figuring out what you want to say, there are some questions below that I found online. You definitely don't have to answer any of them!

Things to potentially consider:
1. Is there a figure in The Radium Girls that resonates more strongly with you than others? If so, what part of their story or character stood out?

2. Even after radium was proved poisonous, and the illness verified as work-related, the radium companies stood fast by their convictions. Why do you believe they were so resilient, and can you imagine modern companies behaving with such similar ruthlessness?

3. How do you believe the radium companies, and the press, would have reacted differently to the scandal had the workers been male? Considering the time period, how did their gender help and hinder their case?

4. How do you think today's world would be different had The Radium Girls not fought back against the radium companies? It takes over 1,500 years for the effects of radium to wear off. This means that the bodies of the women and parts of the towns in which they worked remain poisonous to this day. Despite the harrowing implications, why do you feel this story hasn't been widely explored?

5. What do you find most horrifying about the suffering the women endured as their health deteriorated? Was this too difficult to read? Or did you get through it?

6. What most outraged you about the treatment the women received? The dentist who approached the company for hush money, for instance? What else?

[ufcasey]

Tagging people who may have read this book:
underwaterrhymes , hopecounts , gerberdaisy , wesleycrusher , juliej , rjamz , debatethis , mrsdewinter , bex , mrspez07 , janegold , pinotgrig , minzy , aurora , rainbowchip , travella , @tooshort

[bex]

I will say that so many of the names ran together for me, even with the list at the front. I constantly flipped back to the front. I'm glad I wasn't reading it on my kindle! it was probably the weakest point of the book for me. I cant really remember any of the names now.

1. See above. ha.

2. Well, it was about money. Both the money they made from the product, and the money they stood to lose if it came out they were poisoning their workers, because who wants to buy from a company like that, even if they "changed?" Plus, the significant money they stood to lose from lawsuits and such.

Yes, I can imagine modern companies behaving like that. First, to give the company the barest amount of credit, and I think the author did a good job here, there was such a message overall of "radium is good." Now it seems obvious in retrospect that many realized how bad it was, even in small quantities, but it is certainly not unlikely that for the most part many involved with the company did think they were blameless, at least in the beginning. But modern companies aren't at any better really, we just have better laws.

I think the victims being women both helped and hurt them. The descriptions of what happened were pretty gruesome and I can see there being a desire to "protect" the female workers. At the same time, it was easy to brush off the women's complaints as not being serious, so maybe male victims would have made a difference.

4. I think had the radium girls not fought back, toxic environments would be even more prevalent than they already are (and in states like New Jersey, there is a HUGE issue with the industrial waste of the state's past still haunting it.) I did a project in law school on a baseball field in Baltimore that had arsenic in the soil, and the stuff we were finding about New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, etc. was appalling. And its not just the cities, its the rural areas that were used as dumping grounds. These girls made an important step, but they didn't fix the issue.

I think it is dangerous to assume that this is something that happened almost a hundred years ago and its never going to happen again. My husband does mostly workers comp and personal injury law, but his big boss made hundreds of millions from asbestos litigation - most of those plaintiffs suffered injuries in the 50s, 60s and 70s, but that was still 30 years after this litigation. And even with older products - like lead paint - there is still pushback to prove causation, injuries,etc.

The thing that horrified me the most in the end was that the doctor examining them wasn't a medical doctor. That was just mind blowing to me. So before that I thought his findings were BS etc, and then it was like...he was just making this up!!!


I do think this story would have been different in modern times just because of the flow of information now. Someone (a good lawyer, ha) would immediately have been able to connect the dots on these girls in the different locations. A class action suit would have been huge.

I really liked this book overall. I liked how it read like fiction - she did a good job with personalizing the "girls" but like I said, I found the cast of characters so large that I had a hard time following. I just kind of went with it at points.

[aurora]

Mar 28, 2018 10:08:43 GMT -5 bex said:

I will say that so many of the names ran together for me, even with the list at the front. I constantly flipped back to the front. I'm glad I wasn't reading it on my kindle! it was probably the weakest point of the book for me. I cant really remember any of the names now.

...

I did read it on my Kindle and definitely can't keep most of the people straight! I was really glad that she included photos, but it would have been so nice if the Kindle version at least had repeated the photos in the various chapters about each woman. (I know it's more costly to print photos in the print edition, but this wouldn't have been the case in the electronic version.)

[aurora]

I really appreciated this book. Of course it was horrifying to read how these women suffered and were let down over and over again by their employers, the legal system, and even their neighbors (e.g., the Ottawa community afraid that Radium Dial would be shut down during the Depression), but they were so full of courage and definitely drove positive change. Even though I've been on a fantasy/escapist kick with my reading lately I'm really glad I took a break to read this book for book club.

As for the question prompts:

2. Even after radium was proved poisonous, and the illness verified as work-related, the radium companies stood fast by their convictions. Why do you believe they were so resilient, and can you imagine modern companies behaving with such similar ruthlessness?
Yes, I can absolutely imagine modern companies behaving with similar ruthlessness. Our capitalist, $-driven system allows them to get away with a lot to make a buck (though obviously the Radium Girls have helped to drive some worker protections). Sure, OSHA is better than nothing, but it can't foresee all possibilities, and it only protects workers and not the public.

3. How do you believe the radium companies, and the press, would have reacted differently to the scandal had the workers been male? Considering the time period, how did their gender help and hinder their case?
I think the fact that those suffering the most were women had a significant impact. Women today are taken less seriously by the medical profession than men, and I think it was even worse then. The word "hysterical" was used numerous times in the book to dismiss their concerns.

Remember that at the start of the book women weren't even able to vote (the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920). Legislators could very easily dismiss them in favor of their male bosses and company owners.

4. How do you think today's world would be different had The Radium Girls not fought back against the radium companies? It takes over 1,500 years for the effects of radium to wear off. This means that the bodies of the women and parts of the towns in which they worked remain poisonous to this day. Despite the harrowing implications, why do you feel this story hasn't been widely explored?
Well, the fact that those most horribly impacted were women and that our society doesn't value women in the same way as men certainly doesn't help. I don't know much about those parts of NJ and IL but my guess is that most people who live in that area don't have a huge amount of financial power or political agency, so therefore their stories get less attention.

I was curious and Googled to find that the Ottawa area is still a Superfund site:
www.theatlantic.com/notes/2017/03/radium-superfund-legacy/519408/

5. What do you find most horrifying about the suffering the women endured as their health deteriorated? Was this too difficult to read? Or did you get through it?
The parts about their jaws just breaking apart with the lightest touch were awful. That, and the part about

6. What most outraged you about the treatment the women received? The dentist who approached the company for hush money, for instance? What else?
There was a lot to be outraged about. The part about how Radium Dial refused to turn over their medical records even during the lawsuit was one of them; they were never able to understand elements of their own medical histories that their (past) employer was privy to.

[aurora]

Mar 28, 2018 10:08:43 GMT -5 bex said:

...

I think it is dangerous to assume that this is something that happened almost a hundred years ago and its never going to happen again. My husband does mostly workers comp and personal injury law, but his big boss made hundreds of millions from asbestos litigation - most of those plaintiffs suffered injuries in the 50s, 60s and 70s, but that was still 30 years after this litigation. And even with older products - like lead paint - there is still pushback to prove causation, injuries,etc.
...

Absolutely. See, for example, Monsanto and the increasing levels of certain types of pesticides in our food systems.

Beyond that, there is still so much we don't understand about human and environmental health. We will absolutely discover that more things in common use today are bad for us, and the companies that make money on those things will continue to fight any changes in regulations for as long as they possibly can.

Mar 28, 2018 10:08:43 GMT -5 bex said:

...
The thing that horrified me the most in the end was that the doctor examining them wasn't a medical doctor. That was just mind blowing to me. So before that I thought his findings were BS etc, and then it was like...he was just making this up!!!
...

OMG, yes! And when questioned about it, he and the company were like, "yeah? so what?"

[10nille]

I was surprised how emotional this book made me, part was the absolute horror of what those young women through and the people supporting and the ones destroying them. I wondered what happened to Dr. Flinn and hoped he had a painful death,such arrogance and evil.

[ufcasey]

So I listened to this as an audiobook and that made it really hard to keep track of the various people. But I do remember Grace, who led the first group of women who sued USRC and ultimately settled out of court, and Catherine who finally won a case in Illinois against the Radium Dial company. For Grace and her companions, I understand why they settled because they needed the money and were afraid that they might ultimately get nothing, but it was kind of sad considering their settlement made it that much harder for others to win court cases against radium poisoning. Catherine doing her testimony from her bedside was pretty badass.

I think plenty of corporations screw over their employees/consumers in various ways, some deadly (coal miners, asbestos, lead paint, dangerous pharmaceutical drugs, water in Flint etc). But these companies took it to a whole new level by having doctors examine the girls and hide their findings, to do an autopsy and steal the body's radioactive jaw bone, to purposely put part of a table in the way of a radiation test to limit the radiation measured, using someone who wasn't even a doctor! Like, absolutely crazy shit.

The book does note that when a male employee died the company actually bothered looking into radium poisoning claims, and when that more famous guy died from ingesting some kind of radium drink they again took things more seriously. But all those women workers, who came in with one leg now shorter and an arm missing and they did nothing (well, they fired the one girl because her bad health was causing the other employees to worry about the dangers of the radium they were using) - just disgusting.

The idea of all these poisonous things still out in our environments today is scary. But lead paint and other stuff is still constantly being found in old buildings, so it's not particularly surprising. These companies are long gone and the most concentrated sites are labeled superfund sites by the government, but just because something hasn't reached superfund level status doesn't mean it's safe. There's also still things being discovered, like with Erin Brockovich and Flint Michigan.

[monkeyfeet]

I am glad to have read this book. I thought it was a very quick book.

I felt like Catherine was almost the main character since so much of the book centered around her fight. I can't add much that others haven't, except more atrocities of the company to keep trying to push back the trial in hopes she would die before they would be forced to pay out.

The jaw just falling apart definitely stands out, but also the struggles to have babies breaks my heart. Or for those who were able to have babies and left them behind way too early. Also, the ones who had older sisters and saw what happened to them and knew it was only a matter of time until they experienced it also. It was all so sad.

I feel like if they were male, maybe the dangers would have been spelled out more? Like, the one owner who later died (sorry it's been a while) told one of the girls, "Don't do that," when he saw her putting the brush in her mouth, but with no further explanation. Then her supervisors telling her it wasn't only safe, but healthy.

Yes, with our food. America allows so much in our food that other countries outlaw, for the reason it hasn't been proven harmful, but others regulate because it hasn't been proven safe.

[travella]

I really liked this book. However, like many of you have already stated the characters all ran together. I think the book would have made a much larger impact had it focused on a couple women. I didn't know who I was reading about most of the time so I missed the emotional connection to the women.


Is there a figure in The Radium Girls that resonates more strongly with you than others? If so, what part of their story or character stood out?



No, see above.

2. Even after radium was proved poisonous, and the illness verified as work-related, the radium companies stood fast by their convictions. Why do you believe they were so resilient, and can you imagine modern companies behaving with such similar ruthlessness?



I think the poisoning lasted so long because so few people actually knew it was poisonous, communication was limited back then, especially for that rural of a community in IL, and a lot of money was being made so there was a lot of intentional ignorance. (People heard about the possibility of problems, but didn't want to pay attention because of the money especially in a time when people were having problems making ends meet).

There are still so many things that we are learning about so I can definitely see this still happening today. It wasn't so long ago that we found that smoking, x-ray machines, cell phones, etc can be harmful. It will be interesting 100 years from now what we will know is dangerous that we currently have no idea about or that we are intentionally ignoring.

For me, the story hit a little close to home.
I grew up a couple hours from the IL plant and even have a college friend living in that town currently, so I wonder how that instance in history is still effecting that small community. I'm not sure I want to stop and visit now though...

[wesleycrusher]

Mar 28, 2018 11:45:55 GMT -5 aurora said:

Mar 28, 2018 10:08:43 GMT -5 bex said:

...

I think it is dangerous to assume that this is something that happened almost a hundred years ago and its never going to happen again. My husband does mostly workers comp and personal injury law, but his big boss made hundreds of millions from asbestos litigation - most of those plaintiffs suffered injuries in the 50s, 60s and 70s, but that was still 30 years after this litigation. And even with older products - like lead paint - there is still pushback to prove causation, injuries,etc.
...

Absolutely. See, for example, Monsanto and the increasing levels of certain types of pesticides in our food systems.

Beyond that, there is still so much we don't understand about human and environmental health. We will absolutely discover that more things in common use today are bad for us, and the companies that make money on those things will continue to fight any changes in regulations for as long as they possibly can.

Mar 28, 2018 10:08:43 GMT -5 bex said:

...
The thing that horrified me the most in the end was that the doctor examining them wasn't a medical doctor. That was just mind blowing to me. So before that I thought his findings were BS etc, and then it was like...he was just making this up!!!
...

OMG, yes! And when questioned about it, he and the company were like, "yeah? so what?"

It reminds me of Concussion- the NFL doc who is not a neurologist (i think he was a rheumatologist?) denying CTE and the NIL players having to fight for disability.

[aurora]

Mar 28, 2018 14:42:05 GMT -5 wesleycrusher said:

Mar 28, 2018 11:45:55 GMT -5 aurora said:

Absolutely. See, for example, Monsanto and the increasing levels of certain types of pesticides in our food systems.

Beyond that, there is still so much we don't understand about human and environmental health. We will absolutely discover that more things in common use today are bad for us, and the companies that make money on those things will continue to fight any changes in regulations for as long as they possibly can.


OMG, yes! And when questioned about it, he and the company were like, "yeah? so what?"

It reminds me of Concussion- the NFL doc who is not a neurologist (i think he was a rheumatologist?) denying CTE and the NIL players having to fight for disability.

I hadn't heard about that! But there is definitely a playbook for companies hiring unqualified professionals (that is, professional in another field) who sound credible to help them fight claims. There was one guy who sold out to several unrelated industries featured in Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt (maybe it was smoking and acid rain? It's been a while).

Have a little sense of ethics, people!

[minzy]

I still have a lot more to go and will come back in a few days, but in the meantime... in the beginning, it took me too long and a google search to figure out what lip painting actually was. I was envisioning them actually painting with the handle part in their lips (like Christy Brown who only painted with his left foot) rather than them licking the brush to smooth the bristles between strokes... anyway.

I think is going to be exactly “my” kind of book - nonfiction law and science. It’s reminding me of Erin Brockovich’s story and A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr (about water contamination in Massachusetts).

[underwaterrhymes]

I actually didn’t have as positive of an experience with this book as the rest of you seem to have. I found the topic intensely interesting, but was really put off by the author’s writing style, which seemed to draw too much on her romance novel roots. (I really grew tired of hearing how pretty this woman was or how this one styled her hair.)

All of that said, I think it’s really important history and one that has lessons we still aren’t learning from today. (Flint, MI anyone?)

I absolutely think the fact they were women had a lot to do with why it was swept under the rug. Marginalized communities are often taken advantage of by large corporations or institutions. It’s an infuriating, heartbreaking story, but I found myself skimming a lot because I just couldn’t handle the author’s telling of it.

[rainbowchip]

I was going to skip out on this month because the book just didn't seem like something I would be interested in but I was wrong. This pulled me in!

I do agree that the physical descriptions were a little much. They didn't really add much to the story.

I also am horrified but also confused as to how someone's jaw bone can just fall out of their face. I know one of the women had a sore on her face that part fell out through but a few times they were just sitting around and suddenly their jaw bone was out. How?
Also, how do you continue to talk and eat without a lower jaw?

I also agree that modern companies are probably right now covering up something dangerous. Like someone said, there are so many things used in the US that are banned in other countries.

The only reason the ball got rolling on the investigation was because a man died. There is no question in my mind that the women did not have their complaints taken seriously because they were women.

[redmonkeystomper]

I wasn't sure if I would like this book but I was surprised and had a hard time putting it down.  Like others have stated the characters ran together and I had to refer back to list.  I felt so bad for these women and their families.  I also had a hard time understanding how ones jaw bone just falls out but I assume they had open wounds and it came out in pieces through that.  I had to keep reminding myself these women were young when they fell ill and started to die.  So sad to think about leaving their children and families behind.  Also I was surprised to read that doctors would actually not tell patients they were dying because it may upset them or wasn't good to tell them that.  I just can't fathom a doctor not being honest but I have read in other texts from the same time frame the same thing.  

[minzy]

I finally finished this book and thought it was a good read. I found the issue really interesting and am kind of surprised the general “we” have not encountered the story before. I’m glad the author decided to pursue it.

I agree that mention of so many women made it difficult to keep them straight, but I think the author wanted to honor each of them so included as many as she could. She basically says as much in the author’s note at the end. I also found some of the descriptions overly flowery (though she did a theater production about the women, so it makes a little more sense that she was looking for nonverbal descriptions of them). I also found the legal terminology a little imprecise (i.e., saying the company is “guilty,” when talking about the compensation decision of the Illinois Industrial Commission - liable maybe, but “guilty” is not the right word there).

I was most alarmed at the jaws following off, and the blatant audacity of the company reps, including that ridiculous “doctor,” who kept denying the problem. I’m sure stuff can and still does happen like that now, but I hope it’s less and less in the age of OSHA, HIPAA, revised workers’ comp laws, activities of state medical boards, introduction of injury compensation programs, informed consent, patients’ rights, IRBs, the ADA/disability rights... and of course the rise of social media where consumers can interact with company reps publicly in real time and impact the bottom line.

[brewco]

I was really fascinated by this book and finished it in one sitting yesterday. I didn't mind the number of women discussed because there were so many variables in their discovery of the disease. I was shocked with the description of the women's teeth and jaw bones just falling out of their mouths. I've been involved with surgical cases on sarcomas, so that part really stuck out to me too. I felt deeply sad for the quality of life these women dealt with while trying to fight the companies. Another shocking part of the story was the discovery that Dr. Flinn was not even a medical doctor and was fabricating so many results. I agree with most of the above re: reactions would have been different if it were men falling ill. And, I absolutely think there are companies that still do this kind of cover-up. In the medical field today there are still facilities that do not comply with regulations for waste and safe handling of medications and chemicals because it is expensive to have waste picked up and treated.