One part of the saga of “why didn't anyone do anything?” is that this was a state's rights problem originally:
> In New Jersey, reformers won their fight for a law allowing compensation for “radium necrosis.” State labor and health agencies were able to halt lip pointing, but their power over industry was sometimes limited. For example, the New Jersey Labor Department issued to U.S. Radium Corporation an order to tighten safety for its dial painters — “comply or close.” It closed and moved elsewhere. Federal agencies mostly deferred to state authority over radium. [1]
If you have never seen the ads, they are a head trip too. People telling you how drinking radioactive water will give you “natural energy” and so forth. [2]
The craziest part is that it didn't stop due to lawsuits or regulations, it stopped because nuclear energy plants proliferated and gave us many other isotopes to work with, most of them without the 1000+ year half life of radium. The feds didn't get really involved until fricking 9/11, if you can believe it. [3]
I think the "1000+" is a little misleading, so to clarify: longer half-life means less dangerous, something like unrefined uranium has little radiation risk unless you have very long-term exposure to it (but it's very toxic because it's a heavy metal, so it will still kill you), its half life is billions of years, something on the order of magnitude of 1000 years, like Radium, is way, way worse.
Always such an awful story to read and re-remember. The invisible hand sometimes seems to engage in some rather horrible things for the sake of a buck.
When there was worry about the toxicity of TetraEthylLead in gas, Thomas Midgley stood at a podium, poured it over his hands, and sniffed a glass of it for about a minute and told the audience he could do this every day without suffering ill effects. Midgley eventually took a leave of absence from work due to lead poisoning.
The company he worked for chose to create and promote TEL because it was more profitable, as something that could be patented and monopolized, despite Ethanol being a great octane booster and being used with ICEs since their invention. They didn't want to use Ethanol because that would have been a competitive market.
Your boss will happily give himself cancer in the future to save a dime in the now, especially if you get the cancer way way faster than he does. Your boss will do this because his boss will put pressure on him until he does, and because people are stupid and irrational.
This is a pretty interesting rabbit hole, and it seems like if his inventions harmed others at least they harmed him as well!
> in 1944, he was found strangled to death by a device he devised to allow him to get out of bed unassisted. It is often reported that he had been accidentally killed by his own invention, but his death was declared by the coroner to be a suicide.
If actually suicide, perhaps he felt remorse? Elsewhere in the wiki page:
> Midgley "had more adverse impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history",[32] and Bill Bryson remarked that Midgley possessed "an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny".[33] Fred Pearce, writing for New Scientist, described Midgley as a "one-man environmental disaster".[34]
You know, who knows what happened to the investors in US Radium? Where did their funds go, and is there a trail of other problems (or bodies) with their subsequent investments? I'd like to know who I hypothetically should and shouldn't be investing my money with, as I want the world to be a better place.
One of the principals died from complications caused by radiation, according to Wikipedia; am not able to find any significant names via a search. It may have been a somewhat profitable but eventually insignificant company.
If you read almost any literature taking place the first half of the 20th century, you'll see that a lot of industries were highly abusive of workers, not just radium industry. I'm sure it's even worse pre-20th century.
For example:
- coal mining (read: "The Rocket Boys" by Homer Hickam) - tons of coal mining injury, death, and chronic illness (black lung). Stakeholders were aware of the causes of black lung but put profit over people.
- horse racing (read: "Seabiscuit" by Laura Hillenbrand) - tons of jockey injury and death (not to mention the pressure jockeys were under to engage in bulimia and other unhealthy practices). Super high jockey suicide rates. Stakeholders were aware but put profit over people.
> The mysterious deaths were often blamed on syphilis to undermine the womens’ reputations, and many doctors and dentists inexplicably cooperated with the powerful company’s disinformation campaign.
Money. And the very common belief back then that working people are worse in some way, so they deserve whatever comes their way - if they didn't want to get radium poisoning they could have picked a better industry /s
Unions came up in the middle of the 19th century in the US and 70 years later the women at undark were exploited in the worst kind of ways. Also the regulating bodies were obviously ineffective. Social innovations take a long time to succeed…
> The report which the company provided to the New Jersey Department of Labor credited Cecil Drinker as the author, however the ominous descriptions of unhealthy conditions were replaced with glowing praise
How did this blatant fraud not automatically prompt the government to come down hard on USR?!
> In New Jersey, reformers won their fight for a law allowing compensation for “radium necrosis.” State labor and health agencies were able to halt lip pointing, but their power over industry was sometimes limited. For example, the New Jersey Labor Department issued to U.S. Radium Corporation an order to tighten safety for its dial painters — “comply or close.” It closed and moved elsewhere. Federal agencies mostly deferred to state authority over radium. [1]
If you have never seen the ads, they are a head trip too. People telling you how drinking radioactive water will give you “natural energy” and so forth. [2]
The craziest part is that it didn't stop due to lawsuits or regulations, it stopped because nuclear energy plants proliferated and gave us many other isotopes to work with, most of them without the 1000+ year half life of radium. The feds didn't get really involved until fricking 9/11, if you can believe it. [3]
1. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/history-10...
2. https://flashbak.com/vintage-produce-of-the-day-cure-all-rad...
3. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/students/history-10...