Reply #2: Ew. As I recall the story, the girls would lick their little paintbrushes as they worked...

[Hekate]

... not for the taste, obviously, but to moisten them. Hence the jaw decay.

Even years later, wristwatches sometimes had too much radium to be safe. My dad, who loved gadgets, got a glow in the dark watch in the late 1950s. I mean that thing really glowed. My dad liked to wear it to bed, but my mom didn't think it was all that safe. Eventually he got a round rash on his skin where the face of the watch sat -- and eventually there was some newspaper article about that brand having excess radiation.

Since I was a little kid at the time, I have no recollection about recalls or anything like that, but it has stuck in my mind as the way we and our industries can be careless long after certain dangers are known.

Hekate