Radium Girls, 1922
Employees of the U.S. Radium Corp., also known as the Radium Girls, paint numbers on the faces of wristwatches using dangerous radioactive paint. The Radium Girls were told that the paint was harmless, but the women in each factory ingested lethal amounts of radium after being told to "point" the brushes on their lips in order to give them a fine tip.
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