MovieChat Forums > Nothing Sacred (1937) Discussion > radium poisoning

radium poisoning

posted 10 years ago by NewtonFigg
7 replies | jump to latest

When this movie was made, some wrist watches were made with radium paint on the dials so they would glow in the dark. Many of them were made at a factory in Woodside, Queens County, New York. Forty years later, many of the young ladies who had worked at the factory, died of radium poisoning. To get a nice smooth line on the dial, they ran the tip of the paint brush on their tongues which were thereby coated with the radium paint. The whole block the factory was on was later fenced off and condemned as a toxic waste site. It was a real problem and this movie trivializes it.

[–] liscarkat-2 10 years ago

Oh, gad, lighten up.

[–] NewtonFigg 10 years ago

OK. Now I'll go ahead with my comedy about a guy misdiagnosed as having AIDs.

[–] TopFlight 9 years ago

I'm always surprised by accounts of people licking their paintbrushes. That's remarkably stupid, and shouldn't be done even when one is painting with non-toxic paint.

[–] moviewatchinguy 8 years ago

reminds me of D.O.A. and the 'luminous poison' that was killing Edmund O'Brien. Only he actually was poisoned and died.

[–] notmtwain 8 years ago

When the movie was made, the dangers were already well known. By 1928, five young "radium girls" had sued and received a settlement from US Radium, the largest manufacturer, winning them each $10,000 plus $600 a year for life and leading to major changes in occupational safety standards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls

There were probably hundreds who died nasty deaths and thousands who did not receive any settlements, but the movie came out nearly 10 years after the litigation and just as now, there were probably also people around who faked illness, providing a legitimate story line for the writer of the short story that inspired the film.

[–] jonkennedy 8 years ago

I froze the film and read the initial news article March had with Lombard's picture. The subheading reads "Townfolk Wonder, "Who's Next?"". In the second paragraph it mentions two are "already in their graves", and that "Deadly radium paint" had been used until recently at the town's Paragon Watch Company. It makes one wonder what the other two people died of, if Lombard's character isn't affected.

[–] Satan2016 (23351) 6 years ago

We still had radium dots and hands on watches in the 60s. Now you can get tritium which is less penetrating.

Technically it's not poison, it's radioactive and you get cancer.