#Where are the radium girls buried trial#

The point of this article is to show that citizens of Glen Ridge were largely unaware of the fact that there was any sort of danger posed to them. (Source 1) This source is a new york times article written during the time of the cleanup and it details interactions with Glen ridge citizens through interviews of homeowners both new and old. These articles help me understand the situation ongoing in this area at the time and gives me a little more insight as to what happened in between when the factory shut its doors and when the EPA got involved with cleanup. The website itself also includes photographs of the factory, which, while not helpful to this paper, is still interesting. It also includes a bibliography including more information pertinent to this site and story.

This website from the library of congress has two accounts of written and historical data of the US Radium CO factory where the radioactive waste came from.

It is an important source for me as it tells me the component of the EPA/state government’s part in the story during the cleanup of the site. This document is available on the state of NJ’s website. This is an EPA publication from the early 1990s that discusses the steps that had been taken in remediation along with those that needed to be made already.This article helps me understand the relationship between residents and the radioactivity as well as information on the grassroots activist group that arose from this issue. It was written by Debbie Galant in 1996, in the middle of the cleanup. This is a new york times article written during the cleanup that talks about the interaction with residents and the toxic site.Likely there are more situations where dangerous levels of radium made their way into soil in areas that could harm people how did other sites differ and how might have the two sites on the borders of wealthier (white) communities received different treatment? Why was this not acknowledged as dangerous, and does land value represent a possible culpability and acknowledgement of danger? How did this problem get recognized in the 1980s and what were health concerns from it that people in the area were exposed to? The US Radium Company was not the only clock face painter in the United States, and not the only one to run into legal trouble over girls at the factories becoming ill.

#Where are the radium girls buried trial#

Firstly, why was this radium-enriched soil used for anything? The case of the “Radium Girls” had already faced trial and shown the public the deadly effects that radium exposure can have on the human body. The EPA established the area (along with its sister site in Montclair/West Orange) a superfund site, and cleanup went on from 1990 to 2004. In the 1980s, the state identified dangerous amounts of radon gas in homes, and excessive amounts of gamma radiation both inside and outside.

This radioactive refuse covered 130 acres, which today is mostly residential properties and a public park. Radium byproducts made their way into the soil surrounding the factory, which was then used to fill in the ground, as well as in cement for foundations and sidewalks. In the 1920s, on the border of Glen Ridge and Orange, NJ, the US Radium Company operated a factory where radium paint was applied to clock dials.