demonstrates an impressive mastery of many disparate sub-disciplines, and weaves dominant debates of these fields into a tapestry of narrative that is cogent, compelling and compassionate. “An intelligent book that is both meticulously researched and highly readable. By so heedfully unearthing workers’ perspectives and experiences and by broaching extra-workplace questions about consumption, Clark helps transport the history of ‘occupational health’ beyond the framework first forged by George Rosen and Henry Sigerist, based on 1920s and 1930s industrial hygiene.”- Bulletin of the History of Medicine Contributes to the cultural history of the atomic age.”- Labor Studies Journal “A rich education in how 'knowledge about industrial diseases is a contested site of power'. It should be of interest to those interested in social history, women's history, and labor history and the development of public health in the United States."- Journal of American History Radium Girls is a brilliant case study of the radium dial industry. Clark provides a sophisticated and complex analysis of the interaction of labor, reformers, industrial physicians, academics, and industry that illuminates the specifics of this case as well as the development of industrial hygiene in general. "An extraordinarily rich and rewarding book. Finally, in appraising the dialpainters' campaign to secure compensation and prevention of further incidents-efforts launched with the help of the reform-minded, middle-class women of the Consumers' League-Clark is able to evaluate the achievements and shortcomings of the industrial health movement as a whole. She enriches the story by exploring contemporary disputes over workplace control, government intervention, and industry-backed medical research. ![]() Clark's account emphasizes the social and political factors that influenced the responses of the workers, managers, government officials, medical specialists, and legal authorities involved in the case. Their fight to have their symptoms recognized as an industrial disease represents an important chapter in the history of modern health and labor policy. But after repeated exposure to the radium-laced paint, they began to develop mysterious, often fatal illnesses that they traced to conditions in the workplace. Claudia Clark's book tells the compelling story of these women, who at first had no idea that the tedious task of dialpainting was any different from the other factory jobs available to them. In the early twentieth century, a group of women workers hired to apply luminous paint to watch faces and instrument dials found themselves among the first victims of radium poisoning.
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