Like many things originally thought beneficial, radium proved deadly. In the 1920s, hundreds of young women working in factories were exposed to so much of the chemical element that their gravesites can still set off Geiger counters.
“City Lights” host Lois Reitzes spoke with Atlanta native, filmmaker and director Lydia Dean Pilcher about her new film, “Radium Girls.” It focuses on the story of two sisters, Bessie (played by Joey King) and Jo Cavallo (played by Abby Quinn), who work at the American Radium Factory. The factory manufactured glow-in-the-dark watch dials that used radium to make them luminous.
The women would dip their brushes into radium, lick the tip of the brushes to give them a precise point, and paint the numbers onto the dial. That direct contact and exposure led to many women dying from radium poisoning.
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