Explanation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls
The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting radium dials – watch dials and hands with self-luminous paint. The incidents occurred at three factories in the United States: one in Orange, New Jersey, beginning around 1917; one in Ottawa, Illinois, beginning in the early 1920s; and one in Waterbury, Connecticut, also in the 1920s.
They were instructed to wet the tip of the brushes on their tongue to make it pointy. Causing them to regularly ingest small quantities of Radium.
Sounds like good old American manufacturing. Could have easily left a little cup with water nearby, but the workers got a tongue so that would just drive up costs!
Capitalists need to be shot in the streets like rabid dogs
Eh, some of them maybe but try and remember that it’s a tool for economic function, yes there are alternatives, but surely Stalinist communism taught us that any economic system like any tool can be abused. It’s most likely we’ll need a better culture if we’re to fix the issues with the world that capitalism is often used to exasperate.
Reminds me of the ‘radioactive eagle scout’, because while he was attempting to build his breeder reactor from old radioactive material - including clock paint from antique clocks - his ‘big score’ was that he found an almost full bottle of radium paint in the back of a clock.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hahn
Nb: I believe that story is from Ken Silverstein’s book about him, its not in the Wiki article.
Jesus that wiki article got real sad, real quick. From a promising potential career and boundless curiosity to dead at 39 from drug abuse with paranoid schizophrenia. Don’t tinker with radioactive elements without a proper understanding of required safety procedures and maximum exposure levels, folks.
Also, proper understanding of the safety procedures won’t protect you. You have to actually apply them. Don’t ask me how I found it.
This is why workplace safety regulations exist and why part of those requirements is that workers are informed of the hazards they are going to encounter during work.
I assume unions fighting for these regulations would play as a significant reason for the safety regulations in this case? I could be wrong but I don’t believe these regulations came from concerns for the workers as much as the workers fighting for these rights even in the Radium Girls scenario.
The means wasn’t really what I was aiming to point out. I was more communicating solely the motive for those regulations, whether fought for by workers or instated by bureaucracy.
