radium

At BuzzFeed, Kate Moore tells the story of the “radium girls,” the hundreds of women during WWI who worked painting watch dials with luminous radium paint — a substance that would eventually poison and kill them even though they were told it was perfectly safe. What followed was years of employers covering up and denying evidence that radium was killing workers, while berating the women for attempting to get help with their mounting medical bills. Eventually, Moore writes, their fight for justice led to one of the first cases in which an employer was held responsible for the health of workers…

A few of the recent pieces I've liked: T. Christian Miller of ProPublica and Daniel Zwerdling of NPR: Aftershock: The Blast That Shook Psycho Platoon Susan Milius in Science News: Backup Bees Deborah Blum at Speakeasy Science: The Radium Girls (Part II, Part III) Frank N. Von Hippel on the New York Times Opinion Page: It Could Happen Here ("Nuclear power is a textbook example of the problem of 'regulatory capture' -- in which an industry gains control of an agency meant to regulate it.") Michelle Andrews for Kaiser Health News: Demand Grows for Palliative Care