(no subject)
May. 9th, 2018 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretThe Radium Girls by Kate Moore
If my reviews of Murphy's An American Plague or Johnson's The Ghost Map or Carroll's Lab 257 tipped you onto a book you enjoyed, you should read this too, as I continue my journey through amazing pop science about epidemiological history.
The Radium Girls is about radium watch dial painters in the early 20th century, back when the dangers of radioactivity were more poorly understood than they are today. There was only a tiny amount of radium in the paint, and many believed it was not dangerous, or that radium was even healthful. (It did destroy some tumors, after all!) Sadly, radium was dangerous when those tiny amounts were absorbed into the body day after day for years... it had a nasty habit of accumulating in the bones and teeth of the dial painters, because of its similarity to calcium. And then once in place, the accumulations of radium slowly and painfully ate away at its victims from the inside, causing tooth damage and broken bones and blood diseases and ultimately cancer and death.
Most of the victims were poor immigrant women. We know how this story goes: TERRIBLY. As more became clear about the dangers of radium, the radium companies systematically concealed information from their workers in more and more evil ways. Almost nobody was interested in standing up for them.
The Radium Girls is a gripping combination of two stories: The story of the way in which doctors and scientists proved that the variety of seemingly unconnected symptoms afflicting these women were all connected to radium poison, and the story of the way the women themselves became their own advocates and fought for the compensation and recognition they deserved. Both the scientific drama and the legal/political drama are told brilliantly by Moore.
Edit Alsomelannen, plz write a sequel to The Saga of Hearthruler Whitebeard and Snowsgrace Dreamfinder crossing over with this.
If my reviews of Murphy's An American Plague or Johnson's The Ghost Map or Carroll's Lab 257 tipped you onto a book you enjoyed, you should read this too, as I continue my journey through amazing pop science about epidemiological history.
The Radium Girls is about radium watch dial painters in the early 20th century, back when the dangers of radioactivity were more poorly understood than they are today. There was only a tiny amount of radium in the paint, and many believed it was not dangerous, or that radium was even healthful. (It did destroy some tumors, after all!) Sadly, radium was dangerous when those tiny amounts were absorbed into the body day after day for years... it had a nasty habit of accumulating in the bones and teeth of the dial painters, because of its similarity to calcium. And then once in place, the accumulations of radium slowly and painfully ate away at its victims from the inside, causing tooth damage and broken bones and blood diseases and ultimately cancer and death.
Most of the victims were poor immigrant women. We know how this story goes: TERRIBLY. As more became clear about the dangers of radium, the radium companies systematically concealed information from their workers in more and more evil ways. Almost nobody was interested in standing up for them.
The Radium Girls is a gripping combination of two stories: The story of the way in which doctors and scientists proved that the variety of seemingly unconnected symptoms afflicting these women were all connected to radium poison, and the story of the way the women themselves became their own advocates and fought for the compensation and recognition they deserved. Both the scientific drama and the legal/political drama are told brilliantly by Moore.
Edit Also
melannen, plz write a sequel to The Saga of Hearthruler Whitebeard and Snowsgrace Dreamfinder crossing over with this.