Of a dozen radioactive sites, two remain to be cleaned up for “lack of funds,” according to the EPA. In 1980, Ottawa became an EPA superfund site. (In honor of her work, Madeline Piller was crowned Sweet Corn Queen of Mendota County.) ![]() It was a very proud day in Ottawa on September 2nd. Over the past five years, the local community and every single labor union from the surrounding area embraced this project, raising over $40,000 through bake sales, rummage sales, barbeques and bingo nights to bring this story back into the heart of the history of their community. Madeline’s father is a sculptor, and together they designed this statue. Then five years ago, Madeline Piller, a local junior high student, did her labor history project on the Radium Girls. More importantly, their struggle was critical in helping to change workers’ compensation laws and workplace safety standards.įor a long time, the city of Ottawa buried the story of these women, worried that being dubbed “radium city” would harm development. The case eventually made it to the Supreme Court, which ruled in the women’s favor. They were dubbed the “society of the living dead,” racing the clock against a slow and cumbersome legal system for their justice. Seven of the dying Ottawa women initiated a lawsuit against the company in 1934. They say that if you pass a Geiger counter over their graves in the Catholic cemetery outside Ottawa it will still tick a warning. ![]() Many of these workers died agonizing deaths from the effects of radium poisoning. Surviving employees Toots Fuller and June Menne presided over the unveiling.īy 1925, manufacturers were aware of the toxic effects of radium, but said nothing to their employees and took no precautions. Ottawa was a big center for this industry. To do this, management told them to shape a sharp point by licking the brushes soaked with deadly radium. Their job was to paint those glow-in-the dark dials so popular in the day. She is the symbol of the Radium Girls, the women workers in the watch and clock factories that dotted this area in the 1920s through 1940s. ![]() ![]() A tour-de-force of journalism with a meticulous trawl through primary sources and many first-hand accounts of the effect on victims and their families, it is a must-read for anyone interested in the collision between personal and corporate interests.On Friday, September 2, in Ottawa, Illinois, on the site of the old Radium Dial plant a life-sized bronze statue of a young woman holding a flower in one hand and a paint brush in the other was unveiled. Her detailed account of their fight, the result of which many of them did not live to see, will make you weep with rage. Moore has written a detailed account of the long fight-back through the courts by these dogged and largely uneducated young women when the company refused to accept responsibility for what they had encouraged. When the bosses were asked: will this stuff hurt us?, the emphatic answer was ‘no.’ Of course, we know now that radium is lethal it is a poison that attacks the whole body, leading to a slow, painful and disfiguring death. It was both magical-seeming, the girls themselves shining in the dark from the radium dust that covered them and also useful for the U.S. The glamour job for young American women between 19 was to paint radium on watches, clock faces, and military dials.
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