The Peril Beneath the Glow
By Ainissa Ramirez
What happened to radium-exposed watch dial painters a century ago offers lessons about how society should view today’s technologies.
This Article From Issue
May-June 2026
Volume 114, Number 3
Page 152
Partygoers attending a gathering near Newark, New Jersey, in the 1920s might have seen something strange when the lights were dimmed. A young woman’s hair would glow green. A second woman would have glowing fingernails. A third woman would have luminous lips, and when she smiled, her teeth would glow, too. Such women worked in the neighboring clock shop and would have been dying all week to share this party trick using paint from their jobs.
QUICK TAKE
- Modern timekeeping has a history of fads, including the pocket watch, then the wristwatch, and later, glowing clock and watch dials painted with radium.
- Medical proof of radioactive health effects on the women who painted these clock and watch dials changed the way that worker safety was enforced and regulated.
- Modern timekeeping uses cell phones that also come with under-acknowledged health effects on the workers in the supply chain of materials that go into making these devices.
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