This is an IHeart podcast.

And we're back with our American stories.

In 1898, radium, the chemical element that glows in the dark, was discovered,

and in 1917, young women began working in radium factories. Today, these women are known as the

Radium Girls. Here is Kate Moore, author of Radium Girls, The Dark Story of America's Shining Women,

with the story of the women who worked in these factories.

Catherine Sharpe, a 14-year-old girl from New Jersey, going to work on a February day in 1917,

thinks she's lucky to work with this miraculous substance that is glamorous and healthful. She was a dial painter, which meant that she painted

dials with radioactive, luminous radium paint. Those dials were used for watches and clocks to make them glow in the dark,

but the company also produced instruments for ships and warplanes, the dashboards of these

transportation vehicles that would make them light up in the dark. And because Catherine is going to work in 1917, America is on the cusp of the First

World War when demand for these glow-in-the-dark instruments is about to boom.

And so Catherine is employed to paint these dials with this luminous paint and because the work is so

details the dials so small she is taught to put her paintbrush between her lips to

make this fine point but Catherine and her colleagues they all asked is it safe to do this

they didn't accept the technique with blind faith, but the company assured them it was safe.

And in fact, one of the instructors who worked at these radium firms, he told the girls that the radium would put roses in their cheeks and make them beautiful.

And of course, with Catherine reading her magazines and her newspapers, that was

exactly what she thought would happen. If you look back through magazines and newspapers,

you'll find adverts for a whole range of radium products, for cosmetics, soaps and face

powders that will give you a glowing complexion for a radium health

tonic. People recommended that you took it to ward off middle age and tiredness. So dial painting

...