The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women

I always thought occupational health training was dull and the menial paperwork I had to fill out was a pain more than anything. The Radium Girls kept me company when I was knee-deep in a long week of lab work working with an assortment of chemicals. Ironically, halfway through the book I did have a little oopsy, but could rest comfortably in the knowledge that I had some avenue to pursue follow-up care: the office of Occupational Health.

The Radium Girls chronicles the fight that young professional women took on for worker’s rights and the right to fair compensation in the case of occupational hazards. I’ll preface by saying that you will have a better experience reading the book instead of listening to it. It’s not because the narrator is a bit old-timey (it’s quite charming and I think captures the time period very well), but rather because there is a large rotating cast of people to keep track of.

The book is well researched and touches on the lives of most of the girls involved, even the ones that only flitted in and out of the saga. Moore vividly captures their everyday life that brings each person to life, from the aforementioned Radium Girls to each family member, lawyer, and doctor. I am a bit weary about the dialogue that Moore inserts though–I’m not sure if that is creative liberty or thoroughly documented.

In the first half of the book, Moore employs dramatic irony to its fullest. You are left with a growing sense of dread and horror as you learn more about radium and what the girls were told. The author describes with sickening clarity the conditions that the girls suffered without being morbidly gratuitous. Moore handles the fallout of the womens’ death with a sensitive hand as well. Often times, I found myself tearing up so I recommend picking up the book if you’re in a good place.

If anything, The Radium Girls is a tale as old as time. It’s a tale of girls/women who are not believed, whether by the medical establishment, the courts, or the public and left to advocate for themselves. It’s a tale of economic exploitation and corporate cover up. It is a tale of how justice delayed is still justice denied. But The Radium Girls is also a tale of how hard some will fight for justice, how some are willing to lose everything to help others, and how some will never give up.

The echoes of the radium girls can be heard today as we grapple with corporate consolidation in modern America. OpenAI’s rebuffs to a lawsuit from a grieving family that lost their son to suicide sound eerily like USRC’s denial of radium poisoning. Moore’s book will serve as a prescient and constant reminder that we have every right to make our voices heard because we matter.