TIL the radium girls weren't a case of "nobody knew how dangerous radium was," it was "the company had internal reports about how dangerous it was but elected not to tell their workers or customers because it made them money." lmao.

me when i kill 50+ people horribly by telling them to place brushes containing a radioactive material that their body will mistake for calcium and incorporate into their bones into their mouth: 🤭

@cormoranthine of fucking course it was. naturally. my dominant memory of that story is some godawful TV program that recreated it with actresses and portrayed it as though the women were just stupid and vain or something and I, while learning about this case for the first time through that TV program, immediately clocked "uhm are you sure? i feel like you must be leaving some details out? are we sure they're as stupid as you're making them look?" misogyny is so deep rooted in stuff about this.

@pendell it's really so gross. at the time the company tried to brush off their deaths and ongoing health problems by telling the press that it was from syphilis (an STD, implying they had loose morals) or that they had hired "people who couldn't work otherwise" out of charity (the "preexisting condition" defense). deflecting the blame onto the women is a tradition as old as the event =:/

@cormoranthine @pendell please keep talking about this because America will be bringing this back, not that it ever left. But a lot of states allow for a “disability wage” where companies are allowed to pay disabled people sub-minimum wage.

When I worked for Applebee’s back in the 90s we had a lovely dishwasher who did a great job. There was a lady who was paid to go to work with him to “help” but I didn’t ever see her need to actually help him after he was through training and used to the job. He could’ve handled that job alone and there was no reason that Applebee’s should’ve been paying him less than they paid any other dishwasher. They weren’t the ones paying for that lady to help him, if they did then maybe I could understand, but she came from some state program. (He was sweet and the only time I saw him do anything they could even be concerned about was when people would throw dishes into the dish area that would either splash nasty water on him or hit him, then he would yell at them.)

They claim the sub minimum wage is justified because the disabled people just don’t work as fast as everyone else, or because at least he can have a job now the restaurant wouldn’t have hired him at the full wage and he would be “sitting around bored” at his day program otherwise. BULLSHIT.

#disability #FairWages

@cormoranthine hell has to be absolutely overflowing with people who made a lot of money

@cormoranthine Same thing that happened with asbestos.

@datarama @cormoranthine Yep and even that long ago. When was Claire’s make up recalled because it was full of asbestos? 2010 maybe? That’s a store for kids. That make up was for children.

@cormoranthine That makes a lot of sense, in a sickening way

@cormoranthine ah well it’s not like they’re trying to eliminate OSHA or anything.

@cormoranthine wait until you look at things like the match industry with white phosphorous

@cormoranthine I recently watched a documentary about the talc that was used in J&J baby powder and Claire’s make up for KIDS and how they knew it was poisoning women and kids but they didn’t care. Apparently it’s still in make up even though cornstarch works too, but here in the US nobody checks that stuff for safety because it’s used mostly by women. And we don’t matter, especially once we’re past the child bearing years. THE RAGE OMG

@pendell @cormoranthine I felt slightly off topic replying with the talc horrors, but nope, it clearly belongs here because this was/is the problem with makeup and baby powder that have women ovarian cancer and mesothelioma.

#misogyny

@cormoranthine A tale as old as ... capitalism, or at least companies.

the replies to this trill are making me an expert in cases where this happened

@cormoranthine every time!

@cormoranthine it's worse than that: they told the male workers that processed the radium; they didn't tell the women that painted the dials.

@cormoranthine weird, it’s almost like capitalism incentivizes careless people.

@cormoranthine 3M did this with PFOS too...

@maggiejk @cormoranthine That talc powder was used on me as a kid ;-;

@cormoranthine My son was one of the leads in his high school's production of Radium Girls. I checked the book out of the library to read it in preparation for seeing the play. I got through the first chapter, returned the book to the library, and told my son that unfortunately I would not be able to come see him perform in the play because I would not be able to handle it.
It's an absolutely horrific story.

@noisytoot @cormoranthine @maggiejk because the American legal system pretty much explicitly treats disabled people as subhumans barely worth citizenship - they're "tax drains" in the eyes of our politicians

@cormoranthine
A lot of the damage was also due to the phosphorus in the paint, the effects of which were well known. "Phossy Jaw" is nasty.

@fishidwardrobe god, really?? do you have a source for that on hand? i'd love to have that one in my pocket

@cormoranthine ah, the time honored tradition of saving corporate asses by reframing their victims as too dumb to live and thus not worth taking seriously (see also: the namesake for the Stella Awards)

@cormoranthine I'm getting it from Tim Harford's podcast, Cautionary Tales. He did a couple of episodes on this, but I think it was this one: https://timharford.com/2023/12/cautionary-tales-how-the-radium-girls-fought-back/

Given that he's interviewing Kate Moore here, I'm guessing he's quoting her book.

@fishidwardrobe thank you! i'll probably give this a listen later