Carter Roy
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
USRC needs workers to apply the paint.
The watch faces are tiny, some barely wider than a thumbnail.
The work requires small, steady hands and good eyes.
So they recruit young women like Grace Fryer, some as young as 14.
Grace's supervisors walk her through the process.
It's simple enough.
You mix your own paint in a little container.
You dip your camel hair brush in the mixture.
Then you paint the numbers on the watch dial.
Grace's colleagues tell her the brushes lose their shape after a few strokes, so here's the trick.
To get a fine point, you put the brush between your lips.
When the girls question whether it's safe to ingest, they're told it's totally harmless.
Actually, it might even make them healthier.
The girls accepted the answer, so they continued on.
Lip massage.
Paint.
250 dials a day.
6 to 14 brush licks per dial.
That's over a thousand times every single day that these women are putting radioactive paint in their mouths.