Reply #7: Thank you for posting this. I first heard this story as a child in school.

[drm604]

Since then I've run into it many times over the years. It was always a short statement about girls who painted watch dials with radium paint who licked the brushes to shape them and eventually developed bone problems and cancers because of it. It was often framed as being one of the things that led to recognition of the dangers of radiation. Until now, I was completely unaware of the evil actions of their employer and had assumed that it had occurred because of everybody's ignorance about the dangers. It's amazing, and disturbing, how Undark's disinformation campaign seems to be affecting us to this day.