![]() In 1925 a Connecticut woman named Frances Splettscher died of radium poisoning. Within two decades she lost all her teeth, and over her life developed colon and breast cancer that she attributed to the work. She’d only worked with radium paint for a few months, but it already impacted her. She took that advice in the summer of 1924. One day she only earned 62 cents and was advised by her boss to transfer. She didn’t like to “lip-point” because the paint tasted bad, and she found the work tedious. in the 1920s were thrilled to get a job that paid well - 8 cents per painted watch dial - if you could paint fast. The young women who went to work at the Waterbury Clock Co. It would take years for its dangers to be fully understood. In fact, many women would paint their nails and the buttons on their coats with radium for fun.Ī radioactive metal, radium was discovered in 1898 by Marie Skłodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre Curie. This made workers’ mouths glow but they didn’t mind. ![]() To get the paintbrush bristles into a fine point, Keane, who was just 18, was taught to “lip-point” by putting the tip of the brush between her lips and shaping it between brush strokes. The radium made the watches glow in the dark. in Connecticut in the 1920s, she was given the job of applying paint made with radium to the numbers on wristwatch dials. When Mae Keane started working at the Waterbury Clock Co. ![]() ![]() Daily Herald Archive/SSPL via Getty Images For many years, women painted clocks with paint containing radioactive radium, unknowingly putting their health - and lives - at risk. ![]()
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