Alaina Urquhart

But in the early part of the 20th century, when most people's education stopped after grammar school, scientific knowledge was pretty limited, like you said.

And as is often the case today, people just keyed in on buzzwords and associated scientific discovery with human progress.

And of course, it's going to be unquestionably positive, right?

Like we're all progressing.

We're evolving.

This is great technology.

And as a result, the public honestly rarely questioned, and we've seen this in a few cases, they rarely questioned whether products containing radium was safe.

And they've done that throughout history.

I mean, look at arsenic eaters.

There's all kinds of times when they're just being led to believe that this is fine by all these companies pushing these products on people.

And it's easy to go along with the flow and think that you're being told the truth and not questioning.

That's why it's important to question.

Especially because something has a seemingly desirable outcome.

Exactly.

That's exactly it.

Now, quite the opposite, in fact.

They developed a rabid enthusiasm for the fad of consuming radium-based products whenever possible.

So it really went the other way.

And in the radium dial factories where the dial painters were in literal constant contact with the powder and paint, enthusiasm for radium was at an all-time high.

In fact, some of the girls actually liked consuming the small amounts of paint because they liked the way it tasted.