Radium Girls

from Deep Leads by The Orbweavers

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Subjects: poisons, mining, industrial history, occupational health & safety, clockwork,

Radium, number 88 in the periodic table of the elements, radioactive, toxic, and historically used to paint luminous dials for watches, clocks and aircraft instrument panels.

This song refers to a group of women factory workers known as the ‘Radium Girls’, employed to paint luminous dials in the 1910s - 20s. Dial painters were encouraged to lick their paint brushes to keep a fine point, without realising they were ingesting toxic amounts of radium.

In the body, radium mimics calcium, and is absorbed by bone marrow. Over time their employers became aware of the health hazards of radium based paint, but continued to use it without providing adequate occupational safety controls.

Radium dial painters became seriously ill as a result of their exposure. They took their employers to court. The court trials were gruelling. Their illnesses were doubted. The dial painters won their case. Some tragically died before the final ruling.

International health and safety regulations for occupational exposure to radioactive materials developed as a result of the ‘Radium Girls’ case.

The use of radium paint for luminous dials was eventually banned, but not before many workers died of exposure related illness.

When I was 25 years old, I held an aircraft dial painted with radium paint in my hand. I learned the story of the Radium Girls, and I will never forget it.

lyrics

By 1923 there were a hundred in the factory,
Girls from all round town
Saving for a new way out.
There they worked by day, painting in their careful way,
Dials for the sky,
Clocks and watches bright for night.

“Bring the brush up to your lips, keep it with the finest tip”
Little do you know where that paint will finally flow:
Straight into your bones, that’s where heavy metals go,
And there it will love on,
Far beyond the time when we are gone.

And where you rest your head,
Will be a box lined with lead,
And in a thousand years,
You will still be glowing here.

In a thousand years, you will still be glowing here.

credits

from Deep Leads, released September 17, 2017

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about

The Orbweavers image

The Orbweavers Melbourne, Australia

The Orbweavers are Marita Dyson & Stuart Flanagan, multidisciplinary artists working in song, performance and visual art. Their work responds to history, memory and place. They are interested in local waterways, industrial history and environmental change.

They have written and recorded 3 albums, co-produced by their greyhound companions, Fern (RIP 2018) & Susie, released through Mistletone. ... more

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