In 1917, a combination of events occurred that would lead to the establishment of life-saving regulations, and ultimately, to the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

However, throughout American history, women have fought on the front lines of labor reform movements by fighting for better wages, equal rights, and safer working conditions. Thanks to making deceptive packaging illegal, the law also banned a cosmetic called Lash Lure that was known to make women go blind, and Koremlu, a depilatory that contained chemicals known in rat poison that left countless paralyzed - these aren't related to radium, I just think they're interesting.Once upon a time, there was no expectation that employers needed to care about the well-being of their workers. The 1938 Food Drug and Cosmetic Act outlawed deceptive packaging that made Radithor and other radium-branded products marketable. Sometimes it works the way you want, sometimes it doesn't, but in any case always make sure the radium is contained and please don't eat it. Its author interviewed 6 specialists and came up pretty much with the consensus we have today: radium can treat cancer pretty well sometimes. 'Radium - Boon or Menace?' was the title of a June 1932 article in Everyday Science and Mechanics. He was thought to have ingested at least 1400 bottles and was buried in a lead-lined coffin in Pittsburgh. Called, 'Liquid Sunshine,' its most famous consumer died 4 years later after losing most of his jaw, similar to the 'occupational disease' the Radium Girls had. One particular item called Radithor - a portmanteau of radium and mesothorium, an isotope of radium, was discontinued in 1928. Luxury items such as 'radium lingerie' began disappearing from newspaper advertisements. Gone were the days where the element was blindly celebrated, such as in the musical Piff, Paff, Pouf, where a song called The Radium Dance was a huge selling point. The Radium Girls' lawsuit had tarnished the reputation of the magical miracle worker of radium. 'Trust in radium unjustified,' the article sources from a New York doctor. The five killed by this so-called 'new radium disease' were a handful of the girls who were instructed to put radium in their mouths by way of paintbrush. In 1925, a New York Times article ran the headline, 'New Radium Disease Found Has Killed 5.' The new disease was called, 'radium necrosis,' a polite term for the painful process of one's jaw disintegrating and developing tumors. Above the sun are the words, 'Radium Brand Creamery Butter.' There was most likely no radium in said butter, but it must've been a boon to sales. In one ad, a pastoral landscape dotted with grazing cows near a pristine stream are bathed in the warm glow of a rising sun. Numerous are the ads of this time for wares like 'radium silk lingerie' and decks of cards with the word 'radium' emblazoned on them. Products that didn't have anything to do with radium carried the name of the expensive metal to add allure - similar to the way we use words like 'platinum' or 'titanium' today. Radium quickly became a veritable marketing force. But that didn't stop companies from riding the marketing wave it created. Products that fraudulently touted radium as an ingredient were shut down by the government. Radium was put into chicken feed with the hopes the eggs would self-incubate, or at least self-cook. The luminous metal was used in household products such as lipstick, chocolate (in Germany), tonics, and of course, watches. Adding radium to anything somehow made it better. 'No medicine, no drugs,' raves one ad for an item claiming to help alleviate asthma and nine other things, 'Just a light, small, comfortable, inexpensive Radio-Active Pad worn on the back by day and over the stomach at night.' One particularly disturbing medical innovation was the 'Radiendocrinator,' a device the size of a thick stack of credit cards to be worn with an adaptor 'like any 'athletic strap.'' Its inventor, who fervently claimed to use the product, later died of bladder cancer. The glowing element was hailed as a panacea for everything from blindness to hysteria. In the first decades of the 20th century, America, along with the rest of the world, was enamored with it. It's no wonder the girls painting watch dials and such weren't aware of the dangers of straight up eating radium.

Cure for radium poisoning