On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the controversies of the US Radium Corporation, home to the infamous Radium Girls and culprit in the illegal spraying of radioactive substances through the US, most notably St. Louis. The United States Radium Corporation was the leading manufacturer of glowing clock and airplane dials through World War I and World War II. Though not much was known about their key resource—radium—at the time, they still did some pretty dangerous stuff with it.

The most famous is their “Radium Girls,” women (many teenagers) who were hired at their plant in New Jersey to paint the dials and watch faces with radioactive paint, the source of all that wonderful glow! The women were instructed to “point” the brushes and form them with their mouths and lips, thereby ingesting radium all day long as they worked. The illnesses spread through them in the 1920s, leading to a massive lawsuit and some pretty gnarly side effects. Again, the world didn’t know much about this new wonder element of radium, but US Radium Corporation knew enough to have scientists handle it with care and safety, but not the painters.

The other thing that has come up more recently with them ties into an illegal US Army operation called Operation LAC. It stood for Large Area Coverage and involved the Army spraying hazardous chemicals and bacteria throughout the United States to track how it moved and how it affected people’s health. It happened all over the place, but St. Louis was a specific target; the Army sprayed eradiated Zinc Cadmium Sulfide on poor neighborhoods of the town, so they could track the dispersion patterns and effects it had on the people’s lungs. This was brought to light recently by a sociology professor from St. Louis named Lisa Martino Taylor. She uncovered the secret spraying through hundreds of freedom of information act documents and published her findings.

So, how many Radium Girls died, and what were their symptoms? What were the results of their lawsuit in the 1920s? How does Operation LAC tie back to the US Radium Corporation? What happened to the US Radium Corporation, and where are they now? Listen, laugh, learn.

Wired Article on Radium Girls: https://www.wired.com/2011/03/the-radium-girls/

St. Louis Chemical Spraying: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/secret-cold-war-tests-in-st-louis-cause-worry/